coin in bottle – MagicShow.Tips

Folding Nickels…

A little bit ago I came across someone selling a used folding nickel.

It turns out they have two of them:

The one with the straight cut appears to be more homemade and the profile cut seems to be a more professional job. With the nickel being soo small, I don’t know why you’d need it to fold into more than one piece, unless it’s to hide the cut. It appears the one with the straight cut, the cut goes around the building on the tails side to hide the cut.

I honestly have no idea what you would use it for. I checked and a nickel won’t got into a bottle, so you could use it for that, but the effect won’t have nearly the impact as a doing it with a quarter or half dollar.

A quick google search didn’t bring up any listings for anyone selling these folding nickels, so the may be something that someone made a batch of and never sold.

I kind of want to buy them and try to figure out a trick to do with them. If you have any ideas beyond coin in bottle and coin through ring, let me know!

Coin Size…

Recently someone asked me about what size coins I use. Personally I use silver dollar size coins, and I believe you should too. The reason is simple, they are bigger and more visible. There’s really no reason to use anything smaller. Sure some things are easier with smaller coins, but if you take that argument … Continue reading “Coin Size…”

Sure some things are easier with smaller coins, but if you take that argument to cards you’ll see it wrong. Poker sized cards are what 99% of magicians use, however there are bridge size cards which hardly anyone uses for magic. These cards are smaller making a lot of card magic easier with them.

Currently it’s easier than ever to get gimmicked coins custom made and they aren’t that much more expensive than standard gimmicked coins. If you wanted a larger size gimmicked coin you can do that. You’re no longer limited to what’s a stock item.

You owe it to yourself and your audience to use dollar sized coins…Unless you are making an artistic choice to use a smaller coin. For example my coin in bottle routine uses a half dollar, but there is a reason I’m using that coin in the presentation. This also doesn’t apply if you are using a borrowed coin for something like coin in ball of yarn.

Make it Bigger!

One thing I’m trying to do is make things play larger, so it’s easier to see them from the back of the theater. I think this is something that’s really overlooked by many magicians. Sometimes you can’t make something larger, like when you are doing Miser’s dream, the coins size will max out to a point when they are no longer believable as a coin.

One trick that I love is the Coin in Bottle, however it does play fairly small. The nice thing is that the trick has an audio component to it. The audience can hear it rattling around inside the bottle. I really liked the idea of creating an impossible object that I could give away. My idea was to do a tennis ball in bottle:

The use of the topit worked great in a live setting, but not so well in a video. The other method I used a sponge tennis ball that I had cut in half and hallowed out. I would just smash the bottle onto it, collapsing it under the bottle as the other real tennis ball popped into view. Both methods had advantages and disadvantages.

I no longer do this trick in the show as I’m lazy and putting the tennis balls into the bottles was a pain in the butt and not worth the pay off. For me the thing is to keep thinking bigger and actually trying to make it play bigger!