Sure, 4 different foreign coins from the 4 corners of the globe find their way to 4 pockets representing their home countries. It could work as a Travelers type effect or a coin assembly with cards.

RE:

The coins all seek the same destination in the context of a coins across routine, though the path each takes may be different. How would you illustrate the difference in the paths taken?

Mike

I use three coins of one currency, and they follow a coin of another. (Depending on where I am). Uses a trade presentation, sometimes, even to make a point. I.E., lately Chinese companies have been investing a bunch here in Panama, and wherever Panama throws it's money (at this point I pretend to toss coin away,) it always seems to end up with Chineese Backing (clink as coin travels). Just some ideas, seems lots of similar might be derived.

I believe Mr. Townsend, and Mr. Kam have some ideas about the coins having a mind of their own, which may shed some light on why they travel. Perhaps they need vacations, or simply wish to see what things are like from the other side. This introduces some interesting potential as to what might happen to the coins from traveling. Do they get sick, lost, or what happens if they crash?

I tell the viewers that they are dim bulbs and I am so clever than I can do things they never dreamed possible.

I need to do my translocation excecises. When I was a young magician, I used, dimes, then quarters. Now I will attempt these very large 50 cent pieces. I hope to someday be able to transport elephants.

I sometimes perform a coins across using four half dollars, I show the audience the eagles on the tail side of the four coins, and then I explain that I've trained the eagles to perch on my fingertips (I perform a four coin roll down), as well as to fly from one hand to the other (I perform coins across).

The coins across routine I actually prefer to perform is more expository, which is very unusual for me because I generally avoid performing "just because I can" magic, but the particular routine I use garners me the strongest reaction of any of the versions I've tried.

Larry D.

The approach I liked most recently is Kainoa's, in which the question is, "why WON'T the coins go across?" See his "Punctuated Equilibrium" coins across in CoE. Basically, he has routined it so that he's trying to do "coins across" by the coins keep jumping around and refuse to get into position to start the routine.

Curtis forgot to mention the idea he uses on his Palms of Steel video which I think is quite funny..

"The Coins are so old and have changed hands so many times that they just do it on their own, now."

Curtis, are you forgetting your own material?
Am I going to have to follow you around from thread to thread?


I also like Soctt Guinn's idea of sending money via Western Union.

Both of those are nice.

Frank

Occasionally I'll demonstrate what happens everytime I visit a magic shop. No matter how hard I resist the money just seems to go! Ah... but in the end I have a wonderful magic trick to share with all of you.

That sort of thing...

Brian

Have you seen the clip of Roth on Letterman?

Ever since then I have used the 'faxing' premise when performing David's version of Winged Silver. The thumb wiggles (as antennae) cover the action.

Thanks David! And David!

That's all I need, to be stalked by some guy advertising leather cups and felt balls.

Yep, much to my embarrassment, I missed an opportunity to plug my own material. I must be slipping.

Jonathan is being quiet about another presentation for coins across, especially the visual sort, that we have kicked around. It involves using the effect not as magic in and of itself, but as evidence of a much more impressive psychological ability.

Also, I should mention that it's easy to generate interest in your coins across routine simply by placing a spectator's head between your hands as the coins go across.

I love Roth's ending with coins across, where it ends in their hands.

There's just something about seeing their eyes open wide when they see it in their hand makes any routine worth while.

In the "expository" routine I perform that garners the strongest reaction for me, the last coin appears in the spectator's hand similar to what happens in Dingle's routine. I don't know how to beat that ending.

In Psychological Coins Across it's simply a game of follow the leader. It's never explained if the game is of the COINS playing follow the leader or if I'm playing Follow The Leader WITH the coins.

A single line to sum up what is happening. Some routines don't require much scripting.

That being said, I really want more presentations for coin magic that provide some meaning beyond "Look what I can do!"

To paraphrase an old National Lampoon piece:
"A walk through the ocean of Coin Magic’s soul would scarcely get your feet wet."

I blame Peter Samuelson. I saw him do gypsy thread twenty years ago and I haven't been the same since. When you see what magic WITH meaning can be you just don't want to do any other kind.

Traffic sure is bad lately, but it soon could be better. There has been testing on teleportation, but it can only be done with small objects. Its all very secret, but I can give you a small demonstration....

Brian

This question has also seen some thought in the Bizarre magic section. You fellows who don't frequent the dark side might be interested in some other approaches to coin magic, this one from Charles Schneider:

Scientific & Bizarre Motivations for Coins Across

TIME TRAVEL THEORY MOTIVATION

(This would have to be explained with the utmost seriousness. Also – the following 3 story/theories would have to be distilled to a brief finely honed essence lest the audience react to you as they would a dull schoolteacher! I leave that to you.)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines time as "a limited stretch or space of continued existence, as the interval between two successive events" (Show both hands successively)

In the past it was felt that enormous power requirements were necessary for time travel. But a new theoretical black hole containment device, which could provide the solution. Of course, we must start with a prototype using smaller objects. Like COINS. Less risky than using living subjects. Who wants to end up like Jeff Goldblum in the FLY?

(Side bar: This could result in a Mutant/ warped or Inside Out coin! Put a Fly in the hand or other object – butterfly - and the other hand melds the shiny disk into a hairy insect coin (See Roth’s Rubber Coin for this Fusion idea explored) Perhaps with a butterfly – a Winged Monarch Coin flies away miraculously!)

Scattered throughout the world are objects that could not possibly belong to the time period in which they were found. A human footprint contemporary with the dinosaurs? The skeletal remains of men and women long before humanity appeared on the planet? At Aats Bay in the southeast to the Zyzek-twina River near the Seward Peninsula, in Alaska an international team of scientists found a most peculiar COIN, partially eaten away by acids - and made of unfamiliar metals, dated, incredibly, 3476 A.D. was found in the digestive tract of a woolly mammoth. Time travel is not only theoretically possible, but that the future generations may already be engaged in it."

The magi might explain the time travel dilemma – with a twist. "There are problems. The commonest are the so-called paradoxes. For example, if a coin could travel through time, imagine what would happen to a coin if it traveled back in time and fell into the melting pot or was rejected at "birth." In theory the coin will therefore never be created, so the journey could never have been made in the first place; but if the journey occurred then the lazy guy at the mint would still have been born which means the once-thought-lost & melted coin would still have been minted and could make the journey ... and so on and so on. This is a paradox.

The Magician can "resolve" the paradox with 2 explanations – both resulting in the coin visually traveling across:

"There are two possibilities to resolve this paradox. The first is that the past is totally defined, i.e. everything that has happened or must happen, including the coin ALMOST melting, but surviving, cannot be altered and nothing will change the course of history. In other words, the COIN will experience endless "mishaps" on the "conveyer belt," standards checking procedures, and, yet, will never achieve dismal coin-death, thus keeping time (or at least Visual Coins Across events) intact."

"The second possibility is more complex and involves the quantum rules which govern the subatomic level of the universe. Put simply, when the time-travelling coin is accidentally melted or rejected by the standards procedure it immediately creates a new quantum universe, in essence a parallel universe where the coin stamping machine, & even, perhaps, the inventor thereof, never existed, back in time ad infinitum two hundred years or more B.C to that sad place where our lovely coins are never born. Sniff. Sob. The original universe still remains. But, tragically, we still use SALT or shells for trade. Stephen Hawking believes he can explain the origin of our universe in a variation of this parallel-worlds theme.

***********************************************

RADIO WAVES/ TELEPORTATION MOTIVATION

Coins have been determined to emit micro-audio transmissions, even while sitting still. Like the low frequency sounds heard only by dogs and other creatures with acute hearing.

The metallic nature of coins has been proven to serve as actual radio transmitters. One shipwrecked scientist actually used the few Coins he had to build a primitive Ham-radio device and was able to signal an S.O.S. ultimately being rescued. Television and VISUAL stimuli work in the same manner. State-of-the art transmitters in an Australian lab ACTUALLY "teleported" a small object three and a half feet last year. This is not science fiction anymore. It is FACT. I now quote verbatim from a recent Press release by one Dave Murphy:

"The Department of Defense announced Monday that research scientists at the Massachusetts Institution of Technology have successfully tested the first quantum teleportation. Two white mice, weighing between 87 and 90 grams each, received clear bills of health after they were simultaneously converted to photons of light and then transported 13.7 meters through a hydrogen gas tube. They were interstitially reconstituted within 10 seconds and exhibited physical movement 17 seconds later.

Dr. Richard Heisenberg directed the initial experiments and was present for the successful test, conducted in the presence of media and peer review committees. Many of the MIT team members were uncertain if the animals would actually survive the proton-hydrogen transport.

Much of the scientists incertitude began with Werner Heisenberg, Richard's namesake, who was the first scientist to realize that certain pairs of measurements have an intrinsic uncertainty associated with them. For instance, if you have a very good idea of where something is located, then, to a certain degree, you must have a poor idea of how fast it is moving or in what direction. Now referred to as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, in effect, the principle states that within the principles of quantum mechanics one can't measure both the direction and speed of a moving object.

The Defense Department project at MIT will eventually be used to create battlefield teleportation devices that will enable soldiers to transport using quantum-based interstitial conversion. Experts report that this device, should it prove safe and reliable for human travel, would replace traditional battlefield vehicles, including ground-based and airborne assets."

*********************************************

DIABOLICAL MOTIVATION For Coins Across

The Left Hand has long been held as the Hand of Darkness –
In the Middle Ages it was the thief’s LEFT HAND that was cut off as punishment. Witches have always known that the LEFT HAND of a dead thief makes a far more powerful HAND–OF-GLORY candle to keep your enemy at bay.

Apparently inanimate objects have been proven by MIT to have frequencies measurable on sub-atomic levels. Some might even interpret this to be non-human intelligence or emotions. Certainly plants respond to music, and even certain metals appear to be swayed by scientific forces. Thus, even coins are, theoretically, drawn to the "light" – or the "dark’ (if they are bad coins with bloody histories. These coins found blood-spattered by my grandfather on Clark Street, Chicago, at the St. Valentine’s day Massacre site refuse to enter the right hand. Same with these coins stolen from the Titanic wreck. Bad vibes to steal the coins of the restless, traumatic oceanic dead. Same with these which I….err…a "friend" stole from a Church donation box, However, these "Good Coins," which are pure and freshly minted are pure as gold. You almost see their little silver halos…I even dipped them in holy water to keep the "clean.") So please witness, on a miniature level, a battle betwixt good & evil. I beg you to leave your skepticism at the door (tip of the hat to Mssr. Andruzzi)

Enough of this sleight-of-imnd! My fingers are bloody.

Charles S.

How about boy coins and girl coins??

In "The Amateur Magician's Handbook", there is an effect called Gold and Silver. Three Gold Coins start in one hand and three silver in the other. One at a time the gold coins travel to join the silver coins.

The method is in the book, but as far as the REASON... how about boy coins and girl coins. The Boy coin sees the girl coin across the "street" and takes a little stroll over to say hello. At the end the girl coins could "run away" (ie vanish or travel to the hand the boys were in) or you could produce a handful of pennies (ala Sponge Bunnies)

Or you could talk about an all boys boarding school and an all girls boarding school.... the spectator could play the part of security trying to "catch" the kids sneaking out at night.

The second premise is for the classic 3 Fly. Use old coins. The coins represent Pilgrims. The left hand is England, the right hand in America. OR whatever other groups that have fleed presecution and excessive taxes. This could be a very political piece so be caureful who you decide to portray your coins as. (I can't believe I just said that)

The last idea I will share is pretty simple. Again for 3 Fly .

Most jokes have 2 setup lines and then the punchline.
Tell one line of the joke for each coin that travels.
The punchline will evoke laughter at the same time as the last coin traveling induces amazement.


Hope you like.

Joe

When the 'gold' coins and the 'silver' coins "meet", there is some risk of dimes and nickles, right?

Fly safe.

"What's wrong with me Doc? Well sir you're crazy. Doc I want a second opinion. Ok. You're UGLY!!!"
And there goes coin number three--bada bing, rimshot.

Hey, that approach works for Bob Read.