talkmagic.co.uk

Another great piece of writing there Michael. We must keep on promoting BOBO (forget gimmicks guys)

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Michael Jay wrote:Most magicians will tell you that putting a coin into thumb palm without motion of the thumb is unnecessary. I'm telling you that proper training of the hand is, in fact, necessary and you must be able to do this with no thumb movement. This comes down to commitment. We magicians really are a lazy lot, aren't we? Do what I tell you and how I tell you to do it and you will evolve into a slick coin magician...Sorry, I don't allow for lazy students.

After reading your post I thought I would take the above advice try and rid my thumb of any movement. Being fairly au fait with coin manipulations, I foolishly assumed that this would not be too much of a problem... Having now tried to do this over the last couple of days I am struggling to see how it is possible to achieve. Surely there needs to be some movement in order to clip the coin?

I am always looking at ways to improve my technique, but am I taking your words too literally and therefore trying to achieve the impossible (something that we magicians are rather good at!)?

There will be a minor amount of thumb movement that comes with the fact that you are curling your fingers in, but the thumb should not leave its position of being held flatly on the hand. In other words, the thumb should not go down and then back up to grab the coin, rather the thumb should remain (mostly) motionless whilst the coin is placed into the grip.

When you first start working on this, you'll find that your hand will become fatigued fairly quickly because you're forcing your thumb to remain in its position, which is very unnatural. It also forces you to build muscles in the hand that normally are not built. While it was many years back, I still remember sitting, watching television doing nothing but moving the coin from thumb palm to fingers and back, over and over and over, forcing the thumb to remain motionless, but I put somewhere around 10 to 15 hours into getting it down to perfection. It isn't easy.

Try this:

Curl you little finger and ring finger into your palm, leaving your first and middle fingers extended. Have your thumb pointing straight up (so that your hand now looks like a cocked gun). Next, put your thumb down against your hand so that it rides on top of the hand and is fully visible from the back of the hand. Now, curl your first and middle fingers into your hand as if you had a coin. You'll see that there is some natural motion to the thumb - that's okay.

But, if you go from the "gun" position, it becomes very obvious that you've changed the position of your hand upon doing the sleight. Going from the position that I've described above, there is no change in the configuration of your fingers/thumb upon completing the sleight and therefore doesn't call attention to a changed hand position. Any minor motion of the thumb will not be noticed, but if you need to move your thumb about to clip the coin, it can and will be noticed by the more astute spectators.

So, yes, you'll get a millimeter or two of motion out of the thumb simply because it cannot remain absolutely still when the fingers curl in, but you don't need to move it (from its position) to get that coin into clip as you'll find that the knuckle between the first flange and second flange of the thumb naturally moves up (about a millimeter or two) which allows the coin to easily be deposited and gripped.

Mike.

Mike,

Thank you so much. After many hours of practice (yes I have no life!) I can now thumb palm with next to no movement of the thumb, and my thumb palm vanish looks 100 times better for it.

I found that the best way to learn this is to have the coin clipped in the correct position to start with, and then remove the coin with the first and second fingers (whilst not moving the thumb). This helped me get my first two fingers used to the position needed to get the coin back into thumb palm.

I have also found that this palm is much much easier if you keep your hand completely relaxed (remarkably hard to do when you are trying to get your hand into an unnatural position). The minute you tense up, your hand tendons will try and force you fingers slightly downward and into a position where you will have to lower your thumb in order to clip it (which is exatly what your trying not to do!).

Anyway, thank you again Mike, I am very much indebted to you.

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I found this site really helpful as well:

http://www.coinvanish.com/

just go to the foundations section and answer the question.

Firstly, excellent thread, I've just come back to the forum as my re-intro stated and this is really helping clear my head with regards coin work and make me feel slightly better even though I'm months behind the class (I'm in a different in-take lets say).

I don't want to hijack or owt and I may have missed a response to this but I don't think I have; also I appreciate the original point was a few months ago but I saw that Michael was trying to source a copy of Modern Coin Magic. A copy of which is available at the learned pig. This and other great books are on the site its really is a good resource for those inclined to go through the steps to join, all you need is a little magical nous (flamin' nora I managed to get in )

If you're so inclined you could look / sign-up to the learned pig at The Learned Pig

It's not an automatic sign up so be patient, but it is worth it.

Cheers.
lmw.

A simply incredible and beautiful thread. Great job!

Amazing thread guys, I've just started slowly working through!

Just a quick question to anyone willing to anwser, on David Roth's Volume 1 coin magic dvd, he performs Winged Silver, but also an effect called Chink-a-Chink. Seeing as his Winged Silver is a variation on the Bobo effect, I was wondering if Chink-a-Chink was also from Bobo but just under a different name?

@ Wild Card: I can find nothing in Bobo that covers chink-a-chink tricks. The closest to it is handkerchief effects where the coins are put under the four corners of handkerchief then assemble at one corner.

@ SpongeBallSlight-of-hand: Thank you for the kind words. I'm pleased that this is helping you along!

@ lmw: The Learned Pig Project is an amazing resource. I suggest that all members here join the project. Personally, I don't like reading books off of the computer screen, but nobody's library will have it all (with a few notable exceptions, like David Copperfield's library amongst others) and to have such a database of books, free for perusal, can only be a good thing.

@ The Alkhemist: Coinvanish.com is an excellent resource also. Suggested that the members following this thread drop around to that site and take a look. Thank you for posting the link.

@ everyone following this thread: It won't be long now and I will finish this up. There's not much farther to go, unless you have the latest version of Bobo, which includes a sizeable amount of extra information. For anyone who doesn't have Bobo yet, I would suggest that you get the newer offering, just for the extra material included in the book.

Mike.

I think im gonna go back and re-do MCM during the summer, I used the opie guide and coinvanish.com, but this is far superior to that!
Cheers Mike!

I'm going through MCM at the moment, and was directed here by Wild Card. A very informative thread, so thank you Mike for all the effort you've put in.

just work in a way that you enjoy