Daffy Doug,
Magician Bill Kerwood responds to over zealous spectators with,"Hey now! No grabbing. This isn't a yard sale!"
Anything that disarms/diffuses the immediate insistence to handle and examine can be used to help cover a switch or simply dismiss the request... especially if it gets a laugh or chuckle.
For friends and relatives (the most likely to grab or insist on taking "matters" into their own hands) I try to borrow props and switch in my gaffs for their own stuff. Uncle Tony doesn't need to examine his own deck of cards, ring, spoon or whatever he just handed me. If caught before switching back out, it is sometimes plausible to "fail to hear" the request until after you have dumped the gaff into your pocket. "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Of course you can check out the ______."

We have to remember that there is a lot more knowledge about methods out on the street these days thanks to masked magician exposures as well as many websites selling "street magic" secrets. When I was a kid almost no one knew about gaffed cards or coins. Now lot's of kids have folding halves (coin bite) or have come across gaff cards. I teach computer programming in high school. In my last class three students had knowledge of D'lites and Boomerang card among other things. Two were XCM fans. With that in mind, I sometimes use the following line: "Let me show you that later in private, right now I have something that everyone can enjoy." Maybe you'll get around to showing them "something" later in private...or not.

There is great advice in the posts above regarding routining, respect and the performance area. When doing close-up on a mat, that area is my stage. Spectators enter that area only at my invitation. It is a matter of demeanor and mutual respect in addition to your presentation that affects the audience's response.
*Present a puzzle and they will want to solve it (and perhaps feel compelled to examine your props).
*Present skill and they will be impressed by something they clearly cannot do (no grabbing for props here).
*Present an effect that is seamless enough that they "cannot suspect, let alone detect" a plausible means of accomplishing it and you have magic. I've seen people afraid to touch props after a strong performance.

It has always been my experience that the usual time people get grabby is when there has been tension or guilt in the perfoemance they picked up on. If I have shown everything clearly and fairly, there is less tendency to want to examine it. I also avoid these moments by leading directly into another intro that keeps the heat off of the gaffed items.

No. But that's understandable, because a quality musical instrument, be it Kenny's clarinet, or my Epiphone classical guitar runs sometimes in the thousands! If someone breaks it, you're out a fortune. So people should be understanding when you want to protect a high price-tagged investment.

Now a deck of cards, as most people understand it, runs two or three bucks at the most....

Don't use gimmicks! Problem solved!

I do skill magic till I won there trust than I can put in the gimmicks
and I use save outs
if they asked me why I need that many card deck I say "to fool you" I use a force deck king of spades a let them pick a card and do a sort of amb. card then I say now take pick a card but NO king of spades and I fooled them a little
sow I admit that I have gimmick decks just too fool people who don't trust me
revearsed phycoligy
I love it an it worked

Here are some suggestions, and they usually work:

If I use a trick deck, and its pretty obvisous that it's a trick deck (ie. CARDTOON) then I just say "this is a really special deck, it has XYZ power in it", people usually wont check the cards cause they just want you to show them the magic trick.

Now if you wanna do the magic (cards has been set up in certain ways) using a normal deck, you should still let people examine the cards, shuffle them if they wished, never say "NO", cause that would ruin the magic moment. If there's no way you can get your cards set up to the way it was for the magic without being suspenious in front of them, then just change to a new magic trick. To pull that off, I recommand you know a magic trick that doesn't require set up.


As for trick coins.. you need a quick switch like all the other people had suggested in here. The same goes for trick decks like blank decks, always prepare for a normal deck and be ready for the switch.

Friends are not great to preform to as they do know you so are more confident to ask such questions but yeah do a switch for a normal deck
~ Soybntree

A great way to solve this problem is to at the start of your performance do some effects where you end clean. That way when you are handling a gimmick you will have already built up trust with the audience and they'll have less reason to suspect you. But when at the start when your preforming the effects where you end clean don't openly tell them to examine the objects(s) your using ( otherwise later on when you have a gimmick in play they will wonder why you didn't tell them to examine the object this time) instead just lay them out in a clean manner so that if they so wish they can pick up and examine them.

PLAN YOUR ROUTINES!!!! If you plan a routine, you can often find out cleanups for gimmicks, to name a few

Pointless by Greg WIlson, it is a gimmuicked pne but the way the routine is structure, it allows you to hand out the pen.
A gimmicked coing routine, jumbo coin!!!! If you are performing with shells ect, just produce a jumbo at the end,the heat isn't going to be on your gimmicked coins etc, which will allow you to ditch the coins whilst pulling out a pack of cards or a pen etc.

Its all about your routining, if you do it well, your gimmicks shoulkd be hidden....

Unkown7777's post is also a good idea, don't tell them to 'examine' the gimmicks, but you can lay them n the table or tell them to hold it for a sec, which implies that everything you are doing is gimmickless, even though you don't directly tell them to 'check it out'

Like everybody else is saying, just make sure you end clean. Best thing I ever bought was a cheap magnifying glass (Sherlock homes style) to offer to the spectator when you finish an effect. This gives you the perfect opportunity to reach into your pockets and switch/ditch any undesirable material. The first person I saw do this was Daryl but I'm sure it goes further back.

My uncle is the same way. The first time I told him I wanted to show him a trick, he grabbed the deck of cards and started flipping through them when I took a few steps back to get something.

I start with a normal deck and then switch for a gimmicked one if I want. After the gimmicked trick I quickly (But not too quickly) put the deck away and switch out again. Work great

I agree that structuring the routine so you end clean. The other day I did the hundred dollar bill change for my housemate & he was suspicious but I followed it up with a cool illusion of making the president on the bill smile/frown & he didn't care after that.

Ya know, I guess it's all how the audience perceives you. I've had that problem in the past. It was usually a moron I won't perform for again. That said...

The other night I performed for a group of about 15 people. It was at a friend's house. We were sitting around a big table. I wove a tale about military secrets and Area 51. Then I told of the USS Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment. I explained a bit about Synthetic Quantum Environments, and our government's involvement with that.

Then I did Reality Twister on a Papermate pen. When I tossed them to the table, one guy jumped back and said, "I ain't TOUCHIN' that!!"

Maybe I told TOO good a tale?

Doug

That's why I like Scotch and Soda its a gimmicked set but yet you can let them examine it afterwards. They will have no clue.I get very good reactions.

I agree with RJ Hunt, if you continuously show your friends tricks they will start asking those "dangerous"questions. Try to show them only routines that end clean or if you really need an opinion on a gaffed deck/object/etc trick find a local magic club/store. Magicians won't ask to see your deck.