1. Michael Rubenstein, thanks for your advice and your mention of L'Homme Masque move. Roth uses it in one of his "Made Easy" tricks, v. 1, so that looks like a good move to learn.


2. Ray (or whoever cares to answer): I looked at The Dai Vernon Book of Magic's contents, and it looks great. Definitely in my future. But I've been spending too much on magic lately, so I wonder if the subtleties on the French Drop that Vernon and Ganson discuss are available elsewhere (I'm hoping in a book I already own). Besides Roth, I have Ammar's book -- DVD? -- on coins, Bobo, and a few others that I can't remember at the moment.


Bob

P. S. I also have Ouellet's, Close-up Illusions, which has several versions of the FD. I'm beginning to feel like the fox in one of Aesop's fables -- too many choices make for long delays. So I'm going to start with the FD; only question is where to learn it from.

Encyclopedia of coin sleights

Amazon does not check copyrights. They sell whatever gets uploaded. Just because something is available on Amazon does not mean it is legit. And this not only applies to Kindle editions but also reprints. With print-on-demand it is very easy and quite cheap for a pirate to reprint any book they like.

Fair enough, Michael! I've got that one.


Chris, I had no idea. That's sobering, especially given that they're driving local bookstores out of business.

Bob G, "normal FD level" would be holding the coin in the usual FD (or Spellbound) position: at the tummy level with the hand palm up. Turning the coin a quarter angle and holding it between the thumb and forefinger instead of the middle finger (which I forgot to mention) enhances the illusion. This is just my opinion. Others may disagree.

Pointing out what is on each side of the coin (eagle, Kennedy), whether you hold it regularly or turned a quarter angle, gives you a reason for holding the coin in that unnatural FD position. Think about it: when in your daily life do you ever hold a coin like that?

It's not necessary to immediately go for something like a pen or wand with the "free" hand. You can, after the coin has "vanished," reproduce it somewhere, as Michael Rubinstein points out above. But you better not wait too long, or they will go for that other hand. That's the basis of the Spider Vanish, where the spectators think they know where the coin is hiding, and then you show them that they don't (casually, of course; not: hahaha, gotcha!). (There are also various ways to show both hands empty after a vanish, and also ditching, but you're a beginner, and those are more advanced techniques.)

The FD is best done as both a put and a take simultaneously. If you're right-handed, you're holding the coin in your right hand in either classical FD position or with the coin turned a quarter angle. The left hand moves toward the coin in the right hand to "take" the coin, while simultaneously the right hand moves (and actually there's more movement of the right hand than the left) toward the left hand to "put" the coin into the left hand. The motion stops as your hands meet and your left hand shields the coin in the process of "grabbing" the coin. The coin is then "dropped," and the left hand, "holding" the coin in a closed fist, rotates in place palm up, while at the same time the right hand, with the coin FP'ed, rotates palm down, showing in the process an empty space between the thumb and fingers where the coin was just held, and moves away, reaching for something or assuming a natural position. It is important to note that except for the rotation, the left hand stays stationary.

I believe this is the opposite of the way the FD is normally done. The left hand stays stationary while the right hand moves away. Normally, it is done where the right hand stays stationary while the left hand moves away.

In addition, as the coin is "taken," you should not be looking at your hands, but rather at the spectator, saying some patter (but please do not say, "I take this coin ..."; rather "Watch" can be OK), or at that pen you're about to pick up. And after the left hand "has" the coin, a little motion of the fingers, as if you are adjusting it in your closed fist - again not looking at your hand - adds a little convincer.

That's about the best I can describe it, at least the way I do it.

The "Vernon Touch" chapter of The Dai Vernon Book of Magic teaches more than just subtleties when it comes to the FD. It teaches a whole philosophy of magic. As most magicians who post on the Café will tell you, Vernon was The Man. He revolutionized close-up magic. (He died in 1992 at the age of 98.) He was known as The Professor. I suggest you drop everything else, get the book and read that chapter. It will elevate your approach to magic (and teach you to do a good FD to boot).

I'm greatly relieved to know that Vernon's book is available from Lybrary.com, which is a great source for out-of-print books (original stuff too). And, Bob G, it is only $19.90.

Thanks, Ray, for this detailed description. And I love Lybrary. (Thanks, Chris!) This is very helpful.


Bob

Here's what I'm talking about...

Beautiful, Mb! Thanks for sharing.



By the way, lately I've been taking your advice and just working on the basics. I've often heard the advice, "Learn sleights only if you need them for a specific trick," but I think that at the very beginning it makes sense to learn the basics that most tricks are going to use anyway. I'm working mostly on the classic palm and the French Drop, as taught by David Roth on his first "Made Easy" DVD. (To avoid getting too scattered I'm learning the FD the way he teaches it first. Once I some facility I'm going to study variations like the one that Ray H. describes.)


Meanwhile I have all these great tricks that people have suggested to look forward to.


Bob

The idea of Ammar's Shadow Coins was to do Roth's Chink-a-Chink as if the hands never touched the coins, the hands sort of floating over the coins. He originally did it on the floor with the spectators standing, looking down.

Will Houstoun does a beautiful Shadow Coins seated at a table. By a slight adjustment of the technique and a certain wiggling of the fingers, he makes it look like he's really just waving his hands over the coins and they are magically moving.

He does not like the sliding of the coins back to the four corners for the all-coins-suddenly-in-the-corner move (for reasons I think you can figure out). Instead, he does a reverse Shadow Coins with the coins going back one at a time to the four corners. I don't like that. He could, instead, just pick up the coins and place them in the corner and then do the all-in-the-corner move.

A better way to do it, though, would be to do the Shadow Coins, then do a backfire, and then do the all-in-the-corner move. This way there would be no physically moving the coins around.

I've fooled around with the idea of starting off with the Matrix coin assembly with cards; after that, picking up the coins and placing them in the corners, asking the spectators if they would like to see the trick without the cards, and then going into Shadow Coins.

Of course, this discussion is way off the topic of this thread, but maybe it will give Bob G some ideas for down the road.

Much appreciated, Ray. I didn't understand your idea about "A better way to do it, though, would be to do the Shadow Coins, then do a backfire, and then do the all-in-the-corner move. This way there would be no physically moving the coins around" -- but probably I don't need to yet, as it sounds too advanced for me at this point.


The Will Houstoun Shadow Coins routine sounds beautiful; do you have a good reference for it? I'm guessing it's "Bouncing Shadows" in the penguin lecture https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/7497, but I'd rather not spend $30. Maybe his Shadow Coins is available on its own for a lower price?? I'll look around some more myself, but I thought you might happen to know of a reference.


For the story that I made up, I actually need to make the coins all return to the corners simultaneously, and under cards -- but that doesn't mean I'm closed to other ideas for other coin assembly tricks.


It sounds like you've put a lot of thinking into these coin assemblies -- thanks for sharing your ideas.


Bob

Or, you can do the trick with this story...

https://youtu.be/whG4lSNN4dI

Nice performance, Doc.

Bob G, when I said, "A better way to do it, though, would be to do the Shadow Coins, then do a backfire, and then do the all-in-the-corner move," I meant that rather than do the reverse Shadow Coins to get the coins back to the four corners to go into the all-the-coins-at-once-in-the-corner move (does somebody have a name for this move?), you can do a backfire to get them there, as in that routine by Michael Rubinstein, above. Houstoun does the reverse Shadow Coins to get the coins in the four corners because he doesn't like "sliding" the coins to get them there because doing that might give the spectators "ideas."

Houstoun does his Shadow Coins on his At the Table lecture, which is cheap (less than $5).

Hi Michael and Ray,


Michael, I remember seeing this performance recently. I enjoyed it immensely. You have the talent of both a stand-up comic and a magician -- a lucky circumstance that I'm sure you've worked hard to cultivate. Your story wouldn't work for my personality; mine is probably the polar opposite of yours, very innocent, about four boys who want to have a sleepover together, but their parents don't like them associating with each other. So the three of the boys turn themselves invisible and go to the fourth boy's house. The parents are suspicious and check the boys' rooms at dawn -- and all four are in their own beds, sleeping peacefully.


Ray, the backfire works beautifully in Michael's video. For some reason I prefer, for my story, to let the spectators actually see all four coins together before they suddenly return to the corners. Maybe that's a detail that wouldnl't matter in performance -- I don't have enough performance experience to know. I'll look for that At The Table lecture -- price is right!


Everybody on this thread is so kind! I'm learning a lot.


Bob

1. Ray,

I bought the ATT lecture. I now understand what you were saying. Like you, I don't like the one-at-a-time return of the coins to their separate corners. So if I do a "bare-hands" coin assembly, I'll use a backfire as you suggested. At this point I feel more comfortable working with cards. It may actually be *harder* with cards, as Mb suggested, but the bare hands stuff feels awfully exposed.


2. Michael, my apologies if you already answered this, but your two coins monte has that backfire. Do you have a source for it?


3. The idea of using a backfire is starting to grow on me. Hopefully the surprise ending will make spectators forget that they didn't actually see that the fourth coins had traveled.


Thanks!


Bob

It's on the NYCMS dvd series vol 5, and I believe on the first Penguin live lecture one.