How to Learn Coin Magic – Recommended Basics

Coin Magic Basics

Learning how to do coin magic tricks is part of the core training for every magician. Coins are everyday objects so you always have the props you need to be able to perform magic where ever you are.

Many beginners can be put off by the huge range of coin magic tricks available, many of which, assume that you already know the basics. So the team at the Merchant of Magic have picked the top three places to start, to learn coin magic the right way. These are the training books and DVD’s we suggest to magicians beginning tuition at MoM, and are a perfect place for magicians of any age to start mastering this skill.

Start Learning Coin Tricks the Right Way

bobo learn coin magic

Bobo’s Modern Coin Magic

This is the core text for all coin magic, and probably on the bookshelf of every coin magician today. The book takes you from complete beginner to expert, and then acts as a reference to return to, though your whole study of magic tricks.

beginning coin magic

In The Beginning There Were Coins

Not everyone likes to learn magic techniques from a book. Sometimes it’s much easier to see the moves in action. This DVD assumes no previous knowledge, and will show you the main moves you need to learn to perform magic with the normal coin in your pocket. It’s over 2 hours of training, and covers a huge range of techniques as well as teaching a lot of coin tricks, so you can start performing right away.

Unique Coin Pro Set

Learning sleight of hand with coins is the goal for any magician beginning to learn how to do coin tricks, but sometimes you want to be able to do some crazy tricks, right away. The Unique Coin Set allows this. It’s just a special £2 coin and a 2p coin, but you can do so many tricks with it, and the coins do the hard work for you. We recommend this, when beginners want to take their time to learn the techniques, but also want to amaze their friends right away. It helps beginners to see, just how powerful a professional coin trick can be. Unique Coin Pro tends to be popular with magicians that focus on card tricks too. It is easy to use, and allows them to break up their tricks, so they are not just going from one card trick to another. The set is made from real coins, so you need to be careful that you don’t spend it by mistake!

Need More Help?

If you need more help or advice choosing, please contact the Customer Care Team who will be happy to recommend items that you will love, and answer any questions you may have.

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New £1 Coin – Good or Bad for Magicians Coin Magic?

by Dominic Reyes 2 Comments

The Royal Mint is introducing the new £1 coin. Magicians are concerned that their special magic coins are about to become useless.

Magicians that perform coin magic have always had mixed feelings about the UK £1 coin. It's a little too small and thick to be good for palming, which makes it's use in coin magic limited. However, it's a great coin to gaff, and magicians have been using it to make special magicians coins for many years. Coin gaffs like coin unique, cig thru coin, and cap and coin monte, use the properties of the £1 coin to their advantage. Those special magic coins can be quite expensive, so many magicians are concerned that their special magic coins are about to become unusable.

Why is the new UK £1 coin being released?

The Royal Mint is introducing the new £1 coin because it has estimated that 3% of the current coins in production are fakes. That would mean there are over 45 million fake £1 coins in circulation! If you have ever owned a coin unique and spent it in error, you'll have added to that figure!

The old coin is very easy to copy. The new £1 coin is being marketed as 'the most secure coin in the world'.

The new £1 coin.

The new £1 coin is based on the old threepenny bit, a 12-sided coin in circulation between 1937 and 1971. A competition will take place to choose the image to put on the "tails" side of the coin.

"In honour of our Queen, the coin will take the shape of one of the first coins she appeared on – the threepenny bit. A more resilient pound for a more resilient economy." – Chancellor George Osborne

The new UK £1 coin will be about the same size as the old £1 coin.

Like the UK £2 coin, it will have two colours and will include mechanisms to allow it can be checked using high-speed automatic detection. The Queen's head will be on the heads side of the coin, the tails side will have a design chosen at a later date.

The coin is due to be released in 2017

The New £1 coin and magicians.

There are a few points that are important to magicians. Firstly the size. It's going to be the same size as the original £1 coin, which is not so good news for magic. The small size made it hard to palm and manipulate, so a larger coin would have made it far more useful.

Secondly, it's going to be bi-metal. That's a nightmare for gaffing the coin. The UK £2 coin has a similar issue, which resulted in many poor gaffed coins that would fall apart with use. Creating shells is much harder with a bi-metal coin as the insert needs to be supported.

On the plus side, the edging of the coin should make it easier to grip for coin manipulation. It may be a better coin to palm, and it's size would make it suitable for spellbound routines with a UK 20p coin.

Shoud magicians worry about their existing gimmicked £1 coins?

Not yet. It will take many years for the old coins to be phased out of circulation. Even then, the old coins can still be used with a story about the 'REAL' reason that the coins were changed, leading into your coin magic tricks. When the new coins are released, there will be a race to manufacturer the first gimmicked versions of the coins. Whilst the transition takes place, using the old coin will give magicians some fantastic presentation ideas to breath new life into their coin magic.

Lawrens Godon Interview – Coin Magic and The Dynamic Back Thumb Palm

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

Magic Interview Dominic Reyes caught up with coin magic expert Lawrens Godon for a chat about how he structures his act, his performing style, and the development of his Dynamic Back Thumb Palm.

Lawrens is self taught, having fashioned his performing style and techniques through many stage shows such as the Olympia de Paris with Nilda Fernandez, and on TV shows such as”Sacrée Soirée” by Jean-Pierre Foucault, and “40 degrés à l’ombre” by Vincent Perrot. His coin magic caught the attention of some magicians working on experimental coin technique, leading to high praise indeed:

“The Coin Magic of Lawrens Godon is incredible! I was completely fooled. I had long awaited the release of his DVD on the Dynamic Back Thumb Palm…” – Ponta The Smith“

I spent some time with Lawrens during the European Coinmagic Symposium in Milano and had an opportunity to see some of the most difficult coin magic look absolutely effortless. Anyone who can muscle pass a coin directly into Harada Hold EVERYTIME is someone I need to watch…closely. I recommend Lawrens Godon’s work to anyone.”
– Eric Jones

Dominic Reyes: So, What do you most enjoy about coin magic at the moment?

Lawrens Godon: Today, what brings me the most fun is improvisation. As a musician I use chords, melody and rhythm. Magicians can do the same with all the techniques, props and misdirection out there at our disposal.

Dominic: In what way? Improvisation of your patter or the full act?

Lawrens: There’s a trend in magic named Jazz Magic, so there’s the possibility to ‘Jazz’ our coin magic!
It’s a wonderful feeling, because it’s possible to directly interact with the audience… for example, keeping various coins in some pockets, a wand in the inside jacket pocket, a silk or two, and depending on what the spectator talks about, I’m ready to improvise some magic trick. Maybe it will be with just a coin (a coin flurry), maybe I will produce the wand too and from here improvise a sequence, or/and I make a coin appear on a spectator or/and in their surrounding (under a glass, for example).  See what I mean?  Doing this, I’m free and very often I can respond to a direct wish from the spectator.

Dominic: Are all your magic sets formed ‘of the cuff’ do you also follow performing patterns?

Lawrens: Yes, I often do the classics, 3-fly, cylinder/coins, etc…  But the point is to be free with your magic, and not stuck in a foregone plan, because each audience is different and they each deserve a personal magic act.

Dominic: That’s interesting. You have a structured pattern of the classics as a foundation, which then allows you to come away from it as each audience brings it’s own situations.

Do you think this approach influenced the development of the Dynamic Back Thumb Palm you teach in Moneypulation Vol 1?

Lawrens: I wanted to share what I discovered in the field of coin magic. I thought that my work would be worth of interest for my fellow magician friends, because the move I developed, is in fact a complete system of manipulation…  Just imagine: You show a coin, slowly take (or put) it in the other hand. They clearly see the hand EMPTY, so they can’t help but assume that the coin is where it should be.

Now you open the closed hand, and the coin is gone… this is so strong, that you don’t have to “psychologically” justify your actions.

The same goes with the classic moves, such as ‘Shuttle pass’, ‘Click Pass’, False Count, etc… all adapted to the Dynamic Back Thumb Palm.

Dominic: What lead you to develop the move?

Lawrens: The traditional method of doing the Back Thumb Palm is by first holding the coin between first and middle finger, then from here placing it into position.  I wanted to change that and to begin by showing the coin in a more natural way, i.e. between thumb and forefinger. That was my first step.

Also, the old Back Thumb Palm is meant to be use in a very specific way, with the palm of the hand facing upward at belt level. I wanted to make the manipulation more dynamic and versatile…  So now the actions happen in front of the magician, at chest level, opening a whole new dimension for vertical coin magic.

Dominic:What about angles?

Lawrens: I would say that the move is a lot more covered with my method than with the old one, where one would be fixed with the hand at the side, and left with not so many possibilities… With the hand on the side, you are very exposed from the side and the back.  My method allows you to be covered from all angles: back, sides and front.

Now here’s a tip: The simple fact of doing the Dynamic Back Thumb Palm covers your angles!

Test this with some friends seated at a table : do the ROV and place the coin in the Dynamic Back Thumb Palm, keeping the arms slightly raised. You will discover that the arms block the bad angles from both sides toward the coin which is in Dynamic Back Thumb Palm! This is known as arm blocking technique…

Dominic: But what about in standing situations?

Lawrens: That’s the only condition where Dynamic Back Thumb Palm would be more difficult to use. In walk-around, such as cocktail events, where the magician and the spectators are standing up…
Then it’s up to the magician to adapt his repertoire to the conditions.

Dominic: One of the things that most impressed me about your magic, is the care and attention to psychology, build into the routines. So much of your work shows a very good awareness of behaviour, and how it can be channelled into the magic. Can you give us another example of this?

Lawrens: Sure.. You may know that the fact of showing the palm of the hand is a very strong signal of non-warlike, peaceful behaviour, which belongs to the collective unconscious. So strong a signal that scientists picked it amongst others to represent humanity in a symbolic message, The Pioneer Plaque, which is affixed on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft… the man shows the inside of his hand to be empty… Think about how you can apply this to your coin work.

Moneypulation Interview

Huge thanks to Lawrens Godon to take time out for this chat. Lawrens raised some interesting points about routine structure here. He used a jazz magic style, which is very popular with working magicians. However, he does explain that he also uses classic routines that have been rehearsed and structured, so that he can fall back on these when needed.

As you develop your magic, it’s important that you focus on creating a set of structured, rehearsed and mastered routines, before you move into improvisation. The reason for this is: Keeping consistency in your magic act. Your reputation is only as good as your last performance. Jazz magic has an unpredictable element, which is one of the reasons it is so popular. Improvising your magic ‘as you go’, keeps things fresh, but sometimes life throws something unexpected at you, and you need to have a safety net to fall back onto.

Lawrens publishes an interesting magic blog in which he posts magical and creative thoughts and links from around the web. It’s well worth reading!

Questions for you: How do you structure your coin routines? What are your experiences of using the Dynamic Back Thumb Palm?

Make sure to leave your thoughts in the comments section below:

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