Hi all,

Does anybody do this effect? There is one on the Ammar DVD Vol 2.

What are the reactions like ?

Regards

James

Hi. Since I was 16 yrs old (and that's quite some time ago) I have been doing Goshman's coins through table, and it is so good, I never felt I had to improve it. It is always one of those routines that leaves your audience astounded. It is only restricting in that you need to be seated (although that is also its strength!), but I have two stand up versions out, and there are several others that are very good that can be found in print. I am not familiar with Ammar's version, but he usually selects strong material so I'm sure you'll do well if you learn it. - Michael Rubinstein

Al Baker's Magical Filtration is my choice as the purest version of this effect. This is explained in Bobo and I have done it for years with the Frank Garcia ending explained in Bobo also.

This is one of the most powerful and elegant effects I know. The design of the effect, as is the case with so much of Baker's work, billiantly conceals the method.

This effect always blows people away. You do have to be seated but, when you are, you can't ask for a more impressive routine.

I like Ammar's routine and it does go over well but I don't like his style for this routine. I don't like pretending to do something and pretending to get caught. But then it may play perfect for some people.

There are many ways to get the coins through the table. From the classic Syldini HPC handling to the recent methods that work with glass top tables. Just say the magic words and get expert advice.

Hey David!

I have seen a tape of Slydini performing his coins through the table on an old Dick Cavett show. "You know why you don't see? You don't watch!" Man I got fooled so many times. He truly was a master.
Jason

Has anyone really taken this plot to the next level? How are Roth's versions of this effect?

Lee

Roth's versions are wonderful - and what does taking the plot to the next level mean? Is there another level of putting a coin through a table?

I don't know, just something different. Like a coin only really goes half way. Something like that sort of a Paul Harris or David Harkey style.

Lee

Lee,

Maybe it is time to take the effect to the next level. This may be a great opportunity to take a big step in your career as a magician. What do you imagine?

I've seen a tube pushed through the table and the coins dropped through. I've seen coins tossed through the table as well. John Cornelius has something using the muscle pass to make a coin seem to go through a piece of glass or tabletop. Exercise your imagination.

What do you envision?

Jon

Hmmm, hard to say... I will think about it some more. But I can see a practical app. of Coin Matrix 2003 in your tube thru table thing. Hahahaha, I've taken off my hanging coins, I want to keep this one for myself for a while. This is how I work through effects, I will see what I can come up with.

Lee

Yea I do it!
I have a handling for doing it standing up thru a glass table top. It's in Vol's 15-20 in Apocalypse. There was a thread
on it some time back, if you want to look for it. Also a handling of three coins coming through a glass table top from down under. And a handling where I keep both hands on top of the table and push 4 coins through a table one at a time (Not Glass) and you hear them fall in to a glass that is on your legs under the table! (In an older set of notes) Also international handlings! So you might say I like the trick
:) !

Best David Neighbors
The Coinjuer

Jonathan,

Remember when you and I thought we had taken this trick "to the next level" almost 20 years ago? I have since been preachin' the gospel of the New Way, but there have been only a few takers. Most annoyingly say "hey, you're right" and go on doing things wrong.

Back then, Jonathan and I realized that there was a huge problem in the presentation of most coins through the table routines, including the Al Baker and Goshman handlings that are still prevalent, and the Vernon "Kangaroo coins" as well. The problem was that it's strange and unmotivated to carefully place four coins in your hand, then to bump that hand on the table, and then dump out three, if your intention all the time is to put ONE coin through the table! If you really were a magician, and you meant to push one coin through the table, you'd pick up just one coin, and with something resembling a pushing motion, push the coin through the table.

All the counting and dumping and recounting, and arranging carefully in a square before counting (?!) is wasted motion that can only appear contrived, since it has nothing at all to do with the logical progression of the plot. Eliminate all of that, and you take one giant step away from tricks and towards magic.

Jonathan's routine incorporating this theory was published in Apocalypse. It is crisp and direct, so much so that the coins are simply picked up one at a time, and pushed through the table. There is so little superfluous movement that the effect is over almost too quickly.

My routine appeared in Harry Lorrayne's "Best of Friends 2" as "Lonely Coins Through Table" this was Harry's title, I guess he didn't like "The Best Possible and Only Right Way To Do Coins Through The Table And I Don't Understand Why Anyone Still Does It Any Other Way".

Sorry, does anybody want the soapbox next?

Gee Curtis,

Thanks! Folks might also like to know that Fred Kaps had a great method for taking a pile of coins,
say five or six borrowed quarters,
which are cleanly piled on the table,
covered with one hand,
all go 'squash' right through the table.

And what a clever method that is too! It's in his notes: Kaps in Coins. And described in the Roth book: Expert Coin Magic.

My latest two methods are designed for one coin. One is a 'toss through' and the other a tabled 'melt through'. Both are set to seem that the coin is not handled at all. They go well together and make the 'oh you are a magician... do something... okay can i borrow a quarter' situation much nicer. After seeing a coin pass through the coffee table twice, folks seem to be satisfied.

While on the subject of glass top coffee tables, let's introduce a cat. anyone else like to tease cats with stuff from the other side of the coffee table. The cat has no idea. nothing like finding things to fool the pets.

Jonathan

Jon,
My cats won't walk on a glass table but my two Cockatoos will. We put a cat treat on the table and the cats try from underneath, when we put a sunflower seed on it the birds will fly down, walk on the table and get the seed.
What about cat through table? Or if you have company over show them the cat will try to get a treat from under the table and then make the treat go through the table so the cat can eat it. But I digress....

Lee mentioned about a coin going halfway through a table. Bob Knigge has done this. You start to push on the coin remove your hand from the coin and there it is sitting halfway through the table. Another push and it goes all the way through.

I too have always felt there is un-needed counting and displaying of the coins in the effect. This was a huge problem with the effect in my mind. I have been struggling with solutions for many years now.
I am feeling a bit inspired to go and attack the effect again.
Jason

I have a method in which you place a shot glass on ONE coin and it visually melts through. You hands are clean and the melting it cool. Kind of what Curtis wants. The coin also falls to the spectators hands in the greatest way.

Lee

NOW we're talking, a "Coin under glass into the spectator's hand" through the table.

And what about this: The original thread was titled "Coin" through the table, not "coins". Is there any benefit to having more than one coin involved? Must we do it more than once? If so, why not just repeat it with one coin?

Anybody want to talk about using a funnel?

Or I once had the idea of showing the audience a contact microphone, the kind with the suction cup on it, stuck to the table, then leading to a reciever, and then to a speaker. The idea was that the table was now "bugged" and we could hear the coins as they fell through the table. A simple routine followed, with each coin's passage accompanied with sounds of "Wheee" or "Aaaaaa" pre-recorded, of course. Finally, all three coins were to be passed through all at once, and we would hear them get lost, travel along the speaker wire, and see them drop out of the front of the speaker.

Anybody wants to make that up, they're welcome to it. I'm taking a long sabbatical from Radio Shack.

Is this sort of embelishment the next new thing? Or are we all table-hopping restaurant guys with no formal parlor show?

BTW, my working version of this effect is standup, the coins go through one at a time, and there's the usual surprise ending (ho-hum, another surprise) The coins pass through the table by going through the square hole in a Chinese coin. (They are holes to you and me. To the people who made them, they were zen gateways, through which one could travel to anywhere...)

nfn ('nuff for now)

Yah, what about kicker endings? I am going to walk around my house and throw coins at stuff and see what sounds I get. Then I'll put them into my routine to make the melting stronger with a recorder. I think the coin into spectator hands is very strong. Any other crazy crazy plots?

Lee

Freefall (you'll find a nice demo on http://www.jbtv.co.uk/guide.html) is the most visual coins through table routine I can think of, and requires very little sleight of hand!

Then there's Roth's version of coins through table with an okito coin box, that's not bad either!

How about a coin through table where the coin goes and then it becomes jumbo as it is passed back.