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Maestro Special user 801 Posts |
Today I discovered something very usefull for coin magicians living in the U.S. I put a 5 dollar bill into a vending machine at school, purchased a candy bar, and recieved a "Sacagawea Dollar" (Those new gold dollar coins) and a few "Suzan B. Anthony" coins as change.
I was initially surprized that a vending machine would give change in anything but nickles, quarters, dimes and pennies in the U.S. As I was looking over the coins, I realized that the Silver "Suzan B. Anthony" coins were EXACTLY the same size as the Gold Colored "Sacagawea" coins, and closely resembled each other. In fact, both of them have the picture of a woman on the head's side and a bird with a ring of stars around them on the tail's side. This the rusty cogs in my brain to begin turning, and I realized that instead of using the out of circulation Half Dollar and English Penny combination for copper and silver effects as many books suggest, I could actually do these kinds of tricks with new coins that are actually being circulated by the U.S. mint. I went to their website and found that, sure enough, the Sacagawea Dollars and Suzan B. Anthony coins were similar for a reason: "Once the final design was picked, the Mint had to find a gold-colored metal for the outside of the coin. The final choice was a mixture of metals - a manganese-brass alloy. Not only does this alloy give the coin its golden color, but it also has the same "electromagnetic signature" as the Susan B. Anthony dollar. What's so great about that? It means that to a vending machine, the two coins look exactly the same!" --- http://www.usmint.gov/kids/index.cfm?Fil......llar.cfm I just thought this tip was interesting and could be useful for magicians living in the U.S. of A. |
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