Eg: > “I say, Daniel, is it true what they say, that those coins are perfectly circular?”
> “They are, Isaac—not like the good old English hammered coins that you and I carry in such abundance in our pockets and purses.” ... >“if someone clips or files a bit of metal off the edge of a round coin with a milled edge, it is immediately obvious.”
> “That must be why everyone is melting those new coins down as fast as they are minted, and shipping the metal to the Orient…?” Daniel began,
> “…making it impossible for the likes of me and my friend to obtain them,” Isaac finished.
> “Now there is a good idea—if you can show me coins of a bright silver color—not that black stuff—I’ll weigh them and accept them as bullion.”
> “Bullion! Sir!”
> “Yes.”
> “I have heard that this is the practice in China,” Isaac said sagely. “But here in England, a shilling is a shilling.”
> “No matter how little it weighs!?”
> “Yes. In principle, yes.”
> “So when a lump of metal is coined in the Mint, it takes on a magical power of shillingness, and even after it has been filed and clipped and worn down to a mere featureless nodule, it is still worth a full shilling?”
> You exaggerate,” Daniel said. “I have here a fine Queen Elizabeth shilling, for example—which I carry around, mind you, as a souvenir of Gloriana’s reign, since it is far too fine a specimen to actually spend. But as you can see, it is just as bright and shiny as the day it was minted—”
> “Especially where it’s recently been clipped there along the side,” the lens-grinder said.
> “Normal, pleasing irregularity of the hand-hammered currency, nothing more.”