Before we take our leave of the FP, I want to correct an overstatement I made during the “Grip Forum” at the COINvention. There I said that the Edge Grip was the only concealment that allows you access to the coins at either end of the stack. That’s mostly correct. However, I recently recalled that our old friend the FP does this, too.

To understand this, let’s assume you’ve got a stack of four coins in FP. To produce the coin that’s “on top” (i.e. farthest from the fingers) it’s a simple matter of sliding that coin off the stack with your thumb. Of course, that’s the sort of small move that larger moves were meant to cover.

Incidentally, some people have mentioned that noise is a problem during this, especially if the room is quiet and the coins are new. For those situations, here’s a tip: the noise is caused by the coin sliding against the others. Reduce that friction, and you’ll reduce the noise. So to do this silently, just tip your hand back towards yourself, so that the coin is resting on your thumb. Gravity’s your friend here, as the coin balances on your thumb momentarily during the short trip to your fingertips.

Most times, you won’t be able to turn your hand all the way over without flashing the palmed stack. The good news is you don’t have to. A gentle swing of your hand towards yourself usually gives the coin enough momentum to separate it from the stack, and hold it against your thumb long enough to reach position without scraping against the other coins.

But what about the poor coin on the bottom of the stack? Is there a way to silently produce it? Yes, but it’s little known, hidden by Gary Kurtz in his lecture notes, and it does not appear in his hardcover book. Gary’s production is wonderfully elegant, and it guarantees a silent delivery. Since this deserves wider appreciation, I’ll give the description a try: with the stack in FP, reach across and over the coins with your thumb. By slightly curling the fingers, you’ll be able to lift the stack up off the bottom coin. The stack is levered back, and held between the base of the fingers and the first phalange of the thumb. This allows you to reach past the stack so that the tip of the thumb can contact the bottom coin and shove it to the fingertips.

This will, of course, take some practice. However, it is extremely useful, and the move simply flows once you understand it. Fellow students of Mr. Kurtz’s work will recognize this as the opening production from “Zero, One, Two, Four” in his notes “Continuations…Departures 1”. They also know that he uses this same technique to produce the bottom three coins from a stack of six in “Full Frontal Assault”. They also find this encouraging, rather than intimidating. But coin people are strange like that.