When making, say, a coin disappear...say you sent it into the future and when it reappears in 5 seconds, or so, say you only sent it 5 seconds into the future and now we've caught up to it again. Food for thought.

It has a lot of possibilities and I like it. You could tweak just about any vanish/reappear-later routine to make this work.

It would also work with a send-to-the-future/receive-an-answer-back theme.

Like putting a blank note in a set of Buddha Papers, forcing a card, and opening the papers to show the answer that was "sent back" matches. Instead of mystic ghost writing, it's a sci-fi explanation using a packet of "irradiated" papers, quantum-connected to their future selves.

If there were a way to make a coin with a fake date legally, you could send some random 1980's coin to the future and get back one with a 2037 date in it.

Shoot, now you have me wondering what other simple effects you could do with this idea. I'll need some . . . time . . . to think about it.

Those are great. I'm glad somebody liked it. Mentalism would be a natural. Travel of an object to the past and back might be more do-able in terms of like a postcard and it comes back with old stamps on it...or a different whole postcard with old stamps and a message. I used Time Travel with a card on the table idea...it turned into a selected card that wasn't even picked yet...by the end of the trick.

If you go to the future and return to the exact same time that you left, no one sees you disappear and reappear. You reappear at the very next instant so there is continuity. Sending an object might be better if it disappears and then reappears.

I like your postcard with old stamps idea using the Buddha papers and think I'll work up a story/presentation for it.

I suppose the "predict the future" theme has been around forever, as a psychic/mental ability, but a time travel effect does need a physical object to go and come back again, changed in some way to denote the passage of time.

The method would need to be fool-proof to avoid an obvious switch. A baby chick to a full-grown hen might be straining credibility but the change should be dramatic. A fresh leaf to an old dried one, a slice of apple to a rotted one, a shiny metal key to an old, corroded one.

Heck, if you do your story right, even the old toothpick in a handkerchief would work. Have the spectator break it inside the hanky, then you, um, put your time-travel gemstone on it and explain how the minerals in the stone interact to produce a low-level field which is now now pushing the toothpick back in time to before it was broken. Then shake out the hanky, let the unbroken toothpick drop onto the table, and display it empty.

Lol, don't get me in a brainstorming group because I always come up with the crazy ideas that the others have to cross off the list!

I worked in brainstorming at ad agencies, and any idea is o.k. rather than no idea, so never worry. p.s. I've been collecting really beat up coins for years...not necessarily old, but somehow they got put through the wringer...maybe this is the pace to use them...coin travels through time and when it returns, it is aged a lot. The dried up version of something (I hang and dry flowers for my wife) so a rose comes back as a dried rose, etc. I think we are on to something.

On a different topic, maybe, is that they discovered a Muon behaving so strangely (at Fermilab) that they think they'll have to re-write the Standard Model of Quantum Physics...which is good...new theories might come out of this. Like new patter for time travel, etc. I'm open to that.

P.s. the reason I like this is that magic has for quite a while (perhaps due to Ricky Jay's presentations) been about what cheats and swindlers do...whereas I always thought magic should be about mysterious powers. I think this came about as a result of magicians feeling guilty about misleading the public about "powers" and all that. Charlatanism. I say claim mysterious powers.

Jerry, let's collaborate on this which I think is a very good idea. I have some ideas, too. Contact me at gwebb@pratt.edu The plot I'm thinking of could use some making of paper objects (Buddha Papers) old looking post cards and stamps and even an old looking newspaper article, and let's go from there. Gregg

Will do. Sounds like fun!

Hi Jerry. email me again. I lost yours somehow.

There's an "Oil and Water" effect, I think it's in Mark Wilson's Magic Course, that uses six cards. A, 2, 3, red and 4, 5, 6, black (the other way around would do just as well)

Show the cards and mix them up to they're in no numerical order and are alternating red, black, red, black, red, black.

Take each card from the bottom, in sequence, and put it on top. (Slight weakness here, as you show most of the cards, but two in the middle, you can't show.)

My presentation at that point is, holding the cards in my right hand; "Well, I've mixed up the cards and reversed their order." Making an open fist with my left hand. "This, is a time portal. Pushing the cards through the portal." (Push the stack through your left hand) "causing them to pass back in time ten seconds. And, ten seconds ago, the cards were;" Deal the cards out and show they are in order, "Ace, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six"

Nice one, Ed!

In the back of my mind, I could hear Cher singing, "If I could turn back time . . . "

I could see David Copperfield doing a "time travel" effect and using that song!

I posted this reference in another thread - I have based my Hopping Half patter on the clever time machine story created and superbly told by Dan Tromatter in his you tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45HxBibe8OA&feature=channel

It's 2037 ... we can make the rules. A whole new coin could be minted by then! Or use a "foreign" coin and a vacation theme. Brainstorming is good for the soul LOL

"Hello. I'm from 5 minutes in the future. Yeah, as far a special powers, it ain't as great as flying or invisibility ... but it means we can probably see and do some amazing things together here anyway."

"Hello I'm from 5 minutes in the future, and you don't know it yet, but you selected a card and I saw it. It was the Q-H." Then proceed to do some great force and they get the Q-H.

It's a good setup. Ron Bauer took that and ran with it: https://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/view......&forum=2

In one of my old newsletters I had a short version of the card on the table with just 2 jokers to do the same Bro. Hammond trick. I called it Time traveler and used a Time Travel patter. David Roth used the full long version so I saw it a number of times and of course it was in the book. I lately came up with a hybrid version which is "I had a dream that I traveled ahead in time and saw what card you picked". That kind of thing. It takes the curse off of "Hey, everyone knows time travel isn't real". Having a dream about time travel is altogether more readily acceptable. GW

A funny line, if you have a sense of humor about your act, would be to say that the way that you know their card, or what symbol they chose, or whatever...is that you traveled into the future and saw the ending to the show, found out what they picked and then came back to the exact moment you left.

The twist, or the variation on the theme, would be to say that you don't really go forward in time. No, you stay put and instead send the audience and in fact the whole universe BACK in time and to them it seems like you went ahead in time.

Next time I want to explore Kreskin's use of his seating chart, a pretty big secret of his TV show.

Meanwhile, if you can find this news story, they found an old statue and a woman is opening a box and people are saying it looks like a laptop and proves time travel! Yikes! But good for our time travel stories I guess.

Octavia Butler's Kindred has been made into a pilot and now will be a series made for TV. It is a time travel story.