The invention relates to a commonplace object with an outer surface (4) that encircles the commonplace object (2) and with at least one cylindrical section (6) of the surface (4), in which the technical problem of specifying a commonplace object to whose surface a relatively large amount of information can be applied is solved in that the cylindrical section (4) of the surface (6) consists of a material which can be changed optically, and in that a data bit sequence is written along at least one track (8) on the cylindrical section (4).