Lybrary.com rocks. This was my favorite book coming up, and I still use it. There is not a better way to spend $25.

Best book by far on general magic. It has gems in all categories and really gives a great foundation to build on.

If you are doing four coin roll downs or five coin roll downs it really is better if they all are the same diameter and condition. The friction of the newer coins help. I had a softened set re-sized and milled to give me the best of both worlds.

I like Hay's take on this as even in my own writing of my coin work I come across little ideosyncrocies with the coins, certain little movements or physical properties of old vs. new coins that if you go this way instead of that way it just doesn't work as well for some reason. And you can under and over explain this stuff sometimes. I can only imagine going back to Henry Hay's days. I'm real glad people like Hay took their stabs at it and I always appreciated his great book (And it was really great to me when I was a kid). I'm actually still finding such things out in coin magic. I love all the discovery. As a matter of fact, I just noticed something this morning that I've never seen before with the same old coin in the same old hand. I think this is why I love this stuff.

You can get that book at Borders.com for under five bucks.

He's talking about the milling, and stressing the importance of consistency of feel for handling single coins in the stack.

I do not see the need to go this far. If you are familiar with your props and consistent in your specific handling (and practice), you should be good to go!

If it helps you, try using a little violin rosin per Eddie Joseph's instructions.

Hmm, sounds like I am sold here lol. What kind of material is in here?

The bulk of the multi-coin handlings in the Hay book involve the Oblique Palm. The milling helps very much here. The moves can be done silently even with fairly new coins. That said if you look at the photos you'll get a good idea of the condition of the coins Hay was using. He mentions remilling coins in the text.

I used the Oblique palm for quite some time. Very useful. Much easier to work with multiple coins than the classic palm.

MarkTirone asks:


The better question is what kind of material isn't in here? Hay covers just about everything. You won't find the really modern techniques but I guarantee you can still fool many magicians and laymen alike with the material in that book. Read and understand the first two chapters and you'll be ahead of 90% of the magic community.

Hope that helps.

AWESOME! I think I know what I will be getting next