Learn Coin Magic Tricks > An Old Trick Improved

An Old Trick Improved

Our readers will probably recall the following very puzzling trick, which made its appearance a few years ago. A sheet of brown paper was laid on the table, and an ordinary tumbler was inverted upon it. Beside the tumbler, and on the brown paper, was laid a ten-cent piece, and, a borrowed handkerchief being thrown over the tumbler, any person is asked to set the tumbler over the ten-cent piece. Now, upon raising the handkerchief, the ten-cent piece (which should be under the glass) had vanished. The secret consists in the fact that a round disc of paper, of the same sort as that on which the tumbler stood, was neatly pasted on the mouth of the tumbler, just covering it. Of course, when under cover of the handkerchief, the tumbler was set over the dime, the paper disc covered and caused it to apparently vanish. Now, this is the new version of the trick. Use plain white paper, and when you come forward with the glass, hold it with the bottom towards the audience, and the paper end against your shirt bosom. The glass will thus appear devoid of preparation. However, there is the disc of white paper on the mouth of the tumbler, but this does not show against your white shirt bosom. Now, behind this disc, and against it, you hold with your finger a penny, and when you set the tumbler bottom up on the sheet of paper, there will be under it a penny, but it will be invisible. Now, you make an ordinary paper cone which just fits over the glass, and is open at the top. Then you borrow a penny, and dropping it in the top of the cone it is plainly heard to fall on the bottom of the tumbler. You now command the penny to pass down through the tumbler on to the paper. Upon lifting the tumbler in the cone, the penny appears on the paper. Now you replace the tumbler, and command the penny to come back on to the bottom of the tumbler. This" time you raise only the paper cone, when the coin is found to have disappeared from the table and is on the bottom of the tumbler.