Tag: copentro

Coins To Glass Lecture…

Recently I did a virtual lecture for a magic club in Wisconsin and one of my favorite parts of the lectures is at the end when I do stuff that’s not normally in the lecture. One of the things I did was my Coins To Glass:

It is my great platform for me to talk about fixing tricks you like, but are broken. What I mean by that is the original Copentro trick. It’s a great trick, but that base doesn’t really work with modern standards of what magic props look like. Sure you could come up with a reason to justify the base, but it still looks strange. My method was used to completely eliminate the need for a the thick base, as the coins don’t move vertically.

What’s great about show and teaching this routine to magicians is it really illustrates how I think. How I won’t stop at the original idea (usually), and will keep pushing it until I figure it out. Also that I’m open to suggestions from other performers.

Complete Cheapo Copentro

I’ve written about my fascination with the coins to glass magic effect. One version that I’ve always likes is the Jack Hughes Visible Coins To Glass, or in the USA we tend to call it Bob Kline’s Copentro. That’s the version where the coins visually appear in a shot glass that’s covered by a larger glass.

There are other version of the trick where the glass held mouth up with your hand above the opening of the glass. The coins then “drop” into the glass from your hand. Here’s an example of this version of the trick:

The problem with the version with the handheld glass is that it’s pretty obvious to anyone that the coin came from your hand. The glass doesn’t really isolate where the coins are appearing. The glass does add a fun sound when the coin arrives and adds a prop which may make the trick play a little bit bigger. Both of those a great additions, but they are really aren’t additions to the magic effect. They don’t make it more amazing or really any different from a coins across that happens in the hands.

That’s why I think I really like the Hughes/Kline version where the cup is isolated. It is something more than an in the hands coins across.

Over the last 18ish months I’ve worked on several versions of the trick. One that I will probably never use is this one:

The video above is the more complete version of the one I posted back in January (see it here). I wanted to figure out not just how to get the coin into the shot glass, but how to make the whole thing work start to finish. I’m glad I did that and have that version of the trick out of my mind now…until I try to start to work on how to make multiple coins appear in the shotglass…

Still More Coin to Glass Action…

For a while I’ve been dinking around with a coins to glass routine. Here’s an early version of it:

The problem with the early version of the trick is that it needs some specific lighting. That’s not a problem for virtual venues, but I’m hoping this is something that could transition to my in person shows via video projection or in a some specific cabaret settings.

A couple of weeks ago I did it at the Mostly Magicians Virtual Open Mic and got some great feedback that had me start to explore ways to do the trick that relied a lot less on the lighting. I remembered going to a Tom Stone lecture a few years ago and some of the things he talked about helped me solve the problem.

Here’s what I the current version of the trick looks like:

Would this version hold up to repeated viewings as a stand alone social media video?

Probably not, but that’s not the intention. It’s for live performances, whether it’s in person or virtual and I think it fits the bill. The nice thing is that now I’m working on a trick that has a bigger life than just a virtual show!

Coin To Glass…

About a month ago I make a blog post about how a version of Copentro that I’d been thinking about for while and was finally working out. It was more of a coins to glass than Copentro. What I mean by that is in Copentro the coin appears in side a glass that’s covered in a glass.

Also I should note that what I’m calling Copentro is Jack Hughes Visible Coins to Glass. I grew up calling it Copentro due to Bob Kline marketing it as that.

I like the coins to glass that I’ve been doing, but something inside me wanted to make a coin appear inside a glass that was covered by a glass. Luckily it really didn’t take much to make that happen. Here’s what I came up with:

I think it captured the spirit of the Jack Hughes / Bob Kline effect. Unfortunately I can only do it with one coin

Copentro Like Routine?

After playing with the coin trick from yesterday’s blog post, it hit me that I could do something similar to Bob Kline’s Copentro trick. If you’re not familiar with the trick you can see it here:

Essentially the difference is that Copentro has a base for the cup and then typically a stand the holds the coins to allow them to vanish. Using the coin vanish / production from yesterday (plus something else), I can now do the Copentro trick eliminating the base and stand.

Here’s a proof of concept video (nowhere near a final version):

The routine and the moves still need some practice, but I think it has the potential to be a solid little routine.