A Complex Chinese Character I randomly saw this character on the blog a while ago and saved a image of it as shown below.



Is this even a character? If so, what does it mean? When is it used? What was the origin of it? How do you pronounce it?

I apologize for throwing lots of questions. Any help is appreciated!
This is actually not one character, but a stylistic conglomeration of the characters in the phrase 招財進寶, meaning "ushering in wealth and prosperity".

The characters 財 and 寶 end up being represented with the same 貝 component in this "character". While the left side of 招 (扌) and the right side of 財 (才) are technically not the same component, they look similar enough to be represented with the same component here as well.