When you take hold of a pound coin, or any coin, what do you see?

This is speculative question, the object could be anything, anything at all. In some ways, what it is matters least important. What you see, the paths it carries your mind along, is what I want to know.

What do I see?

Forgery. Reading some news article that a Dutch forger has perfected the creation of a forged pound coin. Where does that lead to? Devaluation. CSI style investigations? Court cases? And reactive efforts from the Bank of England to deal with the impact on the British currency? How to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. New types of coinage, to combat the possibility of it happening again.

What do I see?

History. From battering in the early history of man, to modern day banking. Royalty. Approval of the crown. When did they first approve the English pound. And decimalization. 1971.

What do I see?

Metal. Shapes. Patterns. Atoms. A forge, making irregular, yet regular coins of old. Gold, silver and other precious metals, mixed in varying degrees with varied success to make hard wearing lasting currency. And atoms, molecules, bound, by forces of nature, cooked, melted, hammered and pressed.

All around us is complexity, complexity of modern products, of civilisation. Each small part a cog in some huge machine of man.

What do you see?