What is your Coin Magic Trick “Worker”?

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Ron Bauer Gadabout Coins Revisited

As a walk around performer or a causal entertainer, what is your go to coin magic trick?

What is the one one single coin effect that you choose to perform for a live audience?  We’re not talking YouTube here folks…I want to know what is your single, must-perform ENTERTAINING gotta-show-a-coin-trick effect.  Magicians have a lot of tricks at their disposal and we toy with a few ideas at our local magic meeting.  But whenever we are asked to demonstrate something, we go to our A-list material.

For the past 10+ years, my favorite has been Ron Bauer’s Gadabout Coins Revisited.  Sure I could do a version of 3 Fly (yawn) or a coins across variant (snore) but I want to do something that engages the participant vs watching me juggle 3 (or 4) coins.  Gadabout Coins meets one requirement – Engage the audience

Sure 3 Fly is neat visual juggle and the coins across plot puzzles the watching audience.  However, ff audiences wanted to just watch magic, then they’d be glued to YouTube and network TV magic shows would outperform Reality TV. I know..I know…you’ve all heard audience participation is key and half of you already use it in your unique selling proposition.

The other reason I perform Gadabout Coins Revisited is it charmingly Entertains the audience.  We used to have a guy  (we’ll call him Barry) hang around our weekly magic get-together at the local bar/restaurant and he’d attempt to entertain his audience with a barrage of tricks.  No sooner would Barry finish his Golden Shells routine, he’d launch into another flurry of close-up effects.  One night one of my fellow Magi (Harry…not to be confused with Barry) performed Gadabout Coins Revisited for the same deluged (and slightly bored) audience.  The response was Barry was just ok but “You were REALLY entertaining”.

The main attraction with Gadabout Coins Revisited is it is premise driven and actually has a plot.  To paraphrase from RB’s introduction, the audience actually wonders “Why does this guy carry around three lucky coins?”.  Of course what ensues is a “battle of wits” between the audience and the magician that produces an entertaining 3-phase experience.  Another story I often tell is when Ron (who has an enormous close-up repertoire of advanced close-up material) was asked to perform a trick for one of the patrons, Ron did  Gadabout Coins Revisited.  All of the other magicians huddled around to see what Ron would do…and instead of doing some complex memorized-deck-estimation-load-into-card-case-incredible-poker-deal, he performed Gadabout Coins Revisited.

As a performer, it is helpful to have working material that Gets consistent results.  At each point in the presentation, you know what the audience is thinking and you’re always one step ahead of them.  These type of effects become “workers” because they engage the audience, entertains and consistently get results.  Sure it has an instant reset and at the end I’m automatically ready for my next table…but that’s just a bonus.

I’d be interested to learn about your favorite coin magic trick worker.  So please comment in the blog comments section below!