Pareidolia Pareidolia is seeing what appears to the individual to be a figure, or form in any non-homogeneous area. Apophenia Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. These conditions come into play in our hobby by imagining that something that is visible under 10x or greater magnification is actually present and meaningful. Scratches, random markings or other damage appears to be doubling, mis-engraved die markings or otherwise significant. In short, when you look closely for something on your coin, you'll often find it whether it's there or not.
