You hold a coin in each closed hand, and a friend balances two more on your fingernails. Your first try at throwing a coin from hand to hand goes wrong, and two coins clatter onto the table. On the second try you catch them, and when you open your hands one has three coins and the other has only one.
✨ Level 2: Conjurer
⏱ 20 minutes to learn
🪙 Coins
🎒 Ages 8+
A bit of setting up, or ten to twenty minutes of practice.
👶 Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.👶 Coins are a choking risk for little ones under 4: keep them off the floor and out of small hands.
Sleight of hand means secret moves made with your fingers, like holding a coin in a hand that looks completely empty. "Sleight" is an old word for skill or cleverness. It takes real practice, and it's one of the best feelings in magic.
What is misdirection?
Misdirection is deciding where people look. If you look at your right hand, your audience looks there too, and your left hand can do the secret. A question or a joke at the right moment moves attention just as well as a big gesture.
You hold a coin in each closed hand, and a friend balances two more on your fingernails. Your first try at throwing a coin from hand to hand goes wrong, and two coins clatter onto the table. On the second try you catch them, and when you open your hands one has three coins and the other has only one. It's a level 2 conjurer trick for ages 8 to 13 (grades 3rd–7th), takes 20 minutes to learn, and needs one thing you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone.
The secret
The first try is a pretend mistake. Your left hand secretly catches its fingernail coin, while your right hand lets both of its coins fall, so the table gets two coins and nobody guesses one came from inside your hand.
What you need
A coin
How to do it
Lay one coin in each palm and close your hands, palms up.
Ask a friend to balance one more coin on the nail of each middle finger.
Say you will throw one coin from one hand to the other, which is very hard with closed hands.
Jerk both hands up and open them, and let the left hand catch its nail coin into the palm.
At the same moment, let both of the right hand's coins fall to the table.
Say "Oops!" and ask your friend to put the two fallen coins back on your nails.
Jerk your hands up again, and this time catch each nail coin in its own hand.
Say it worked, and open your hands: three coins in the left, one in the right.
Magic words to say
“Coins can fly, you know, but only a little way, and only if nobody watches them take off. Ready? …Oops. Ready again?”
Pro tips
Look a bit annoyed when the coins fall. A mistake that looks real is the best misdirection there is.
Never let anybody count the coins between the two tries.
Practise the pretend mistake in a mirror until you can't see the left hand catch.
If something goes wrong
If every coin falls, say "That was the warm-up!", pick them all up, and start again from the beginning.
Safety notes
Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.
Coins are a choking risk for little ones under 4: keep them off the floor and out of small hands.
Needs a helper.
Only from the front.
Practise in a mirror.
No fire, no flames and nothing sharp in a child's hand anywhere in the Magic Shop. Nothing ever goes in a mouth, a nose or an ear.
What kind of trick is this?
🔀 Transposition. Something jumps from one place to another. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.
The skill it teaches:Misdirection. People look where you look. Perform it and it counts towards the Coin Conjurer badge.
Questions about the flying coin
What is sleight of hand?
Sleight of hand means secret moves made with your fingers, like holding a coin in a hand that looks completely empty. "Sleight" is an old word for skill or cleverness. It takes real practice, and it's one of the best feelings in magic.
What is misdirection?
Misdirection is deciding where people look. If you look at your right hand, your audience looks there too, and your left hand can do the secret. A question or a joke at the right moment moves attention just as well as a big gesture.