My presentation is one of a performer who does not remember how the trick is supposed to work.



I myself, am even surprised each time I open my hand and find another coin. Works for me!





_________________

There will always be those that wish to rain on your parade, so never leave home without an umbrella...

I often do it similarly. However, I sometimes use a story about a secret affair between JFK (half dollar) and Queen ’Liz (English Penny), which is good for some laughs and grosses out female JFK admirers!



_________________

Scott F. Guinn

Great Scott! It’s Magic!

I have a nice routine about true love (not coins in love).

Ichazod

Great ideas!



I especially like that the "spectator as idiot" theme is not present in any of them.



Gonna run with I-zods theme.



The coins are tokens of the feelings shared between an English girl and myself. We gave each other these coins to remember our caring hearts for each other. When she left I would hold my coin and it was as if she was there with me. She did the same...yadda, yadda, yadda...



Then one day while she was gone again both of us realized we were already forever in each others hearts. There was no need for the mementos at all.



:dancing:



Or: We each have a pair of coins. When apart we hold the coins to remember each other.....



Then one day, she left on a long trip back to her family, I got a letter. A letter from her mother telling me my cherished ____ had been killed in a car accident. My whole world felt empty. (Final vanish)



But the contents of that letter taught me that my life was not empty but forever full with memories.



In that letter were her two coins. (reappaerance not in standard routine)



Yikes!!! Pretty emotional.



How about a routine about a whacky divorce proceeding leaving one person with nothing...except the lawyers.



Oh, it could be happy. They fight over money; that causes the divorce. The lawyers fight and fight till there is no more money and the couple has nothing to argue over so, reunite happily ever after.



There I feel better.



Hey now this is jazz magic imagine having 3 routines for one "effect". You could decide to go lovey happy, sad reflective, or goofy fun happy depending on your sense of the audience.



Thanks you guys for transporting me to this place.



Tom Cutts

I love the divorce angle. You guys are so clever. No wonder I spend so much time here!

See, now there ya go. I liked the "The coins are tokens of the feelings shared between an English girl and myself" angle myself.



But then I'm just an old fashioned romantic I guess. Does anyone know if there is a Ukrainian Coin similar size to a Half dollar? If so, I could really personalize this.



Just thinking.

I also use a romantic theme between the coins, and other times use the playing stupid theme were even I don't know how come the coin keeps returning, I see that routine performed a lot and it brings great reaction.







don

Here is my Hopping half routine, I assume those familiar with the Hopping Half will know how the story fits the effect-



You tell of the love between a lovely young princess (copper) & the handsome young peasant boy (silver) & how the King disapproves of the relationship.



At first the King tried to be clever & gave the boy a job in another land, after a while the boy figured out what was going on.



True love being what it is, he came back.



The King then sent his daughter off to a private school far away so she could not be with the boy.



True love being what it is, she came back.



By now the King was quite angry, he had the boy chained & thrown into a pit with guards watching him at all times.



True love being what it is, he escaped & came back to her.



The king was outraged, he had to keep them apart. He called before him the Captain of his royal navy & told him to stock his best ship with as much supplies as it could hold.



The king gave him several chests of gold & jewels & told him that he was to take his daughter & sail away to the other side of the world & establish a new life for her so that no one knew where she was.



The King watched as the ship faded out of site, he was quite saddened because he knew he would never see his daughter again.



But true love being what it is, the boy spent the rest of his life looking for her.



Well, that's it. I hope someone likes it.



















_________________

Thanx,

Ichazod





"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."



Ichazod@hotmail.com

So Sad, So young.



But I liked it.







2 bunnies up.



Mya

I like Ichazod's one!

Tom, I love your presentation.

I've been trying to find a good routine for this for ages,

I'm going to steal yours!

Cheers mate,

Fon

Those of you who belong to the IBM and get the Linking Ring magazine, may want to keep an eye open for my Showtime column in the next couple of months.
I just sent off a no-gimmick version of Hopping Halves that would allow either coin to be the one that vanishes and re-appears.
No story line; just the handling.
No gimmicks, minimal sleights, you finish clean, and it resets automatically.
As I say, you may want to watch for it.
cheers,
Peter Marucci
showtimecol@aol.com

My HH routine is not half as clever, but I'll write it here in case anyone is interested. It was the first routine I came up with myself when I got into magic again. I bought it at a shop in Dallas and the guy demonstrated as "How many do I have? One? No, you dummy it's two."

How'd you like to learn how a trick is done? (They always say "Yes")

In California there's a place called The Magic Castle. It's a big clubhouse for magicians where we perform for each other and guests. I was there a couple of months ago and saw this guy perform a great coin trick. I'm pretty smart and I figured it out and, although I don't normally do this, you're such a great audience that I'm willing to show you how it's done.

He took a silver American Half Dollar and a Copper English Penny. We use these because they're about the same size and you can tell them apart. He showed his hand empty and he placed the coins in there and closed his hand. He then made us look somewhere else. (Here I use a different line depending on the audience, anything from "Hey! There's David Copperfield!" to "Hey! There's Pikachu!")

(Believe it or not, I usually get one or two people to look away.)

Everybody looked away, but I was too smart. I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw him take the half dollar out (I remove it) and put it in his pocket. When everyone turned around he was wiggling his fingers at his hand, which is what makes the magic happen. He said "How many coins do I have in my hand?" (They usually say "one") No, they didn't see it come out, so they said "Two", but he really only had one (show hand). (Confused) I didn't do something right. Oh, yeah. It was the penny he took out, not the half. (Remove penny). So he said "How many coins do I have left?" They said "Two", but he really only had "one". (show hand).

That's strange. I'm sorry. I was going to show you some magic and I guess I really blowing it.

Oh, I know what it is. He did take the half out and put it in his pocket. There's not enough magic in my finger wiggle to actually get that coin out of there, so I need *everyone* to wiggle their fingers at my fist. Great. He said "How many coins do I have?" Everyone said "two", but he only had "one". (Show hand) I think there was too much magic. I guess I'd better practice this one a bit more.

Well, at least you know how to do a trick now!

Mike

My whole routine for the hopping half is based on my claim that none of this is actually happening and I am simply "suggesting" that the coins go into my pocket. I actually have a spec place the silver half into my breast pocket and then tell the audience that I did it again -it never actually happened at all, see, here are the coins. The kicker is that I claim that absolutely none of this happened and there were never any coins at all - And now, for my first presentation I would like to...

The first routine I developed for my Hopping Half was a fun little story using the coins as visual aids to illustrate the three different types of astronomical eclipses (solar, lunar, and...?).

However, I've discovered that in actual practice, this routine has too much to listen to, and people were forgetting that something magical was going on in my hand.

So now I'm using a patter where the coins are symbols of good and evil, and showing how one cannot exist without the other.

Sorry this is a late post for this thread, but I am still wandering around the magic cafe. I don't do HH any more, but when I did, I used a Star Trek theme with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock being beamed up and down with a faulty transporter.
Best regards,
Tony Razzano