The other day I had a strange idea. I wanted to do a transposition between a tooth and a quarter. Using the toothfairy as presentation hook is a no brainer for this. The challenge was that I wanted one of them to be held in the spectator’s hand and obviously they are very different shapes.
The solution finally hit me, why not hand them a folding coin that was folded in thirds? This will have roughly the same shape as a tooth, and have some textures like a tooth. Once that was figured out, the rest of the mechanics were pretty simple. Here’s me trying it out:
It works! This was a great solution for strange problem.
In my daily writing that I do in the morning, I was brainstorming some ideas using Googly Eyes. One of the tricks that I came up with was essentially a spellbound using a coin an a googly eye. The kicker would be the coin ends up inside of the eye where the black googly part would be.
One of my thoughts was that maybe I should do it with a signed coin. I ended up discarding this idea. The main reason I got rid of the idea of a signed coin was that if the coin changes to the googly eye, then it should still be signed. Well…it should be signed if we’re trying to prove it’s the same coin. Logically if we’re magically transforming it to something else then the signature doesn’t have to be there.
I think magicians get hung up on having things marked, where I think that non magicians don’t need it as much as we think they do. YES, there are times when it makes the trick stronger, like bill to lemon. An ambitious card with a borrowed deck doesn’t. Usually an ambitious card with your deck doesn’t need to be signed.
Now for the next part, which is when the coin appears inside the googly eye, should the whole coin appear inside of it? That’s the thing, if the outside of the eye is still there, then shouldn’t the coin that is replacing the black part inside just be the inside of the coin?
I do have a coin that’s just the center copper part of a half dollar. That would be what would make the most sense inside of the googly eye.
Is that too much logic?
Probably.
However all of that thinking gives me a more unique trick!
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!
I’ve been working on this Silver Extraction coin trick style routine at the fair this week. I’ve learned a lot. First of all, I think the more complex method I’ve come up with to switch the coins, has some advantages over simply doing a shuttle pass. A shuttle pass is a solid method for doing the trick, however the advantage of my complex method is that I can hold the coin more openly after the switch.
One of the problems I’ve encountered working on this is getting the shell to stick to the magnet on the lighter. The solution was simple, I added a second magnet to the lighter and some more shim steel to the shell coin.
Having more magnets and more steel to grab solved the problem. The lighter really firmly attaches to the coin.
Another thing that I’ve learned about the trick is that I need to call attention to the three layer of the coin. Most people have noticed the layers, but never really thought about them. The trick has been getting great responses from the people at the fair this week. I really like how strange the trick is.
Yesterday I started messing around with the Silver Extraction coin trick. Traditionally how the trick goes, is you give them the coin that they hold in their fist. You then pull the silver (silver blob) through their hand and they are left with a clear coin. I think the pulling through the hand is fun, but I think this particular set of coins has a different effect possible.
here’s the idea:
I like the visual of the shaking and having the silver blob sliding around on top of the copper center of the coin. Method wise, I’m not sure it’s an improvement over just a shuttle pass. I’ll be trying out both methods today at the fair.
Many years ago when I was working at Market Magic Shop, I used to demo and sell a trick called Silver Extraction. The effect is you take a half dollar and it ends up turning into a blob of silver and a clear coin. Then at some point someone made a coin that was just the copper center of a half dollar. I don’t know what the routine was, but I’m going to assume it was a similar effect.
I always thought it would be great paired with the blob of silver that came with the Johnson Silver Extraction. Unfortunately they stopped making the Silver Extraction a long time ago, so that was something I never did. Well, recently I came across one of the blobs of silver and bought it.
Now that I have the two of them, I can try it out!
The other day after the magic garage sale and we went out to jam at a local bar, we were talking about coin tricks. I brought up the Perpetual Motion Coin Myth from Paul Harris’s books. This is a coin flourish where you hold a coin sideways between two other coins and get the center coin to spin.
I’ve never seen or met anyone who could do it, but we started playing with it and now I’ve done it and seen it done!
That got me thinking, the next branch of magic is going to beCOINISTRY! That would be fancy flourishes with coins! Start practicing now!
I’m cleaning out the computer and found a video of a magic jam from a while ago when my state was briefly open for people to hang out before closing again. Jamming in person is the way to go, you can creatively play off of each other a lot more efferently than over Zoom.
In the video there are a couple of cool tricks. The trick with the arrow drawn on a card and it makes the coin move was interesting to figure out. Then the ketchup packet to ketchup filled portion cup looked great!
If you don’t jam with other magicians, you are really missing out on fun, and working on your creativity!
My whole life I’ve been fascinated by monte type effects. When I was a teenager I had a trick called Three Coin Con by Eddie Gibson. It was a shell game style routine that used three coins (one was a different color than the other two) and three identical covers. Here’s Paul Daniels doing it:
The trick is a bit of a fooler, it’s got some great magical moments along with the “monte” presentational hook.
The set I had as a kid has long been lost, and recently I’ve been searching for a set. Up until about a week ago, I could only find them in European coins, but I just found a set on ebay and very excited to start doing it again! I’ve got a 8 day run at a fair in about a week, hopefully with a bit of dedicated practice I can start doing it there!
Yesterday’s post I wrote about someone looking for interactive coin magic. Seeing their post, I created an original trick that would fit their requirements. It’s a coin trick, it’s interactive, in that everyone could follow along from home and it has a magical payout. It’s a “touch the screen” type effect, but the magic ending takes it beyond a math puzzle.
here’s how the effect plays, you have three pieces of paper, one has coins written on it, one credit and the final bills:
Someone touches one of the pieces of paper. They spell the word on it, jumping one space per letter.
You tell the you know they aren’t on the word “Bills” so you eliminate that one and throw that piece of paper away.
Now they spell money (starting on the word they ended on), jumping one space per letter.
You tell them you know they aren’t on the Credit, that means they picked the Coins! You then pick up the paper with coins written on it, light it on fire and produce coins!
In my head this coin production would look like this Tommy Wonder picture:
There you go and original, interactive magic trick that had a magical payoff!
While I personally don’t like the the “touch the screen” type effects, I do think that knowing them and understanding how they work make you a more well rounded magician. It’s just another tool in your toolbox that will help you solve a problem.
