Tag: michael close

In my heart, I’m a card guy. I love watching good and bad card magic, and I love doing good and bad card magic. However, I’m at a point in my life where I also understand not everyone loves card tricks. With that in mind, many card tricks can be easily converted to things that don’t use cards. Of course you lose the convenience of being able to carry one prop (pack of cards) that you can use for multiple routines.

Recently I saw a virtual show and someone did the move from Paul Curry’s A Swindle of Sorts. This move is a false shuffle where the audience sort of decides how the cards are shuffled. The show I saw they used it for a sympathic cards effect. Here’s Michael Close doing a similar effect:

That got me thinking about what else could be used that aren’t cards. I’d seen Murray Hatfield of a version with envelopes, that I think ended up with his phone number, then inside the envelopes were words that formed a sentence. then it hit me, I don’t think the objects need to have uniform backs for this to work. That opens it up to things like gift cards or money.

Hopping on the idea of money, I wanted money that’s visually different, so bills from the USA are out. That got me thinking of using currency from a variety of countries. Turns out getting money from other countries that aren’t in circulation is really easy and they’re petty cheap on Amazon:

I ended going to a local coin shop to get mine. I bought 3 sets of 10 bills, so I have enough to do a matching trick, plus an extra set. I think I may buy a pack from amazon if the trick starts to go anywhere so that I can have more variation in my bills.