You take a coin in your right hand, show it, and drop it into your left. You close your left hand, blow on it, and open it. The coin has gone, and both hands are empty.
🎩 Level 3: Wizard
⏱ 3 to 5 days to learn
🪙 Coins
🎒 Ages 8+
A real secret move, or a longer routine. Practise over days.
👶 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.
How do you make a coin disappear?
The easiest way is the Coin Fold: you wrap a coin in paper, let everyone feel that it's still in there, and while you fold, the coin quietly slides out into your hand. Then you tear the paper up and it's gone.
You take a coin in your right hand, show it, and drop it into your left. You close your left hand, blow on it, and open it. The coin has gone, and both hands are empty. It's a level 3 wizard trick for ages 8 to 13 (grades 3rd–7th), takes 3 to 5 days 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 coin never leaves your right hand. As the two hands come together you let it fall back into the curl of your right fingers and close your left hand on nothing. This is the French drop, the first real sleight every magician learns.
What you need
A coin
How to do it
Hold the coin between the thumb and fingers of your right hand, up where everyone sees it.
Bring your left hand over as if to take the coin from underneath.
As your left hand covers it, let the coin drop into the curl of your right fingers.
Close your left hand as if the coin is in it, and move it away.
Blow on your left hand and open it slowly. Nothing.
Put your right hand in your pocket and leave the coin there as you shrug.
Magic words to say
“One coin. Nothing special about it, you can look. Into this hand. Now, the tricky bit is that coins don't actually like being held, so if I just... blow... there. Gone. Don't ask me where, I've never found out.”
Pro tips
Practise the real take first, over and over: the honest move your fake one is pretending to be. If the real one looks wrong, the fake one will too.
A mirror is not optional for this trick. Twenty minutes a day for a week beats three hours in one go.
Your eyes are the trick. Look at your left hand from the moment it closes, and never glance at your right.
If something goes wrong
If the coin shows, close both hands, say "wrong hand", and open the right one instead. A coin that moves between hands is still a trick.
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.
Practise in a mirror.
Only from the front.
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?
💨 Vanish. Something disappears. 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:Practise like a pro. Ready means ten times in a row without looking at your hands. Perform it and it counts towards the Coin Conjurer badge.
Questions about the vanishing 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.
How do you make a coin disappear?
The easiest way is the Coin Fold: you wrap a coin in paper, let everyone feel that it's still in there, and while you fold, the coin quietly slides out into your hand. Then you tear the paper up and it's gone.