Your friend hides a coin in one fist behind their back while you look away. You turn round, study them for a moment, and say which hand it's in. Then you do it again.
🌟 Level 1: Apprentice
⏱ 5 minutes to learn
🪙 Coins
🎒 Ages 6+
Works by itself, or one simple move. It works the first try.
👶 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.
It happens to every magician there has ever been. Stay calm and smile. Lots of tricks have an "out", a way to finish anyway, and every trick page here has one. If there's no way back, laugh, say "even wizards have off days", and go straight into a different trick.
How do magicians read minds?
They don't hear your thoughts. Mind-reading tricks use maths that always lands on the same answer, a secret peek, or a code agreed with a partner beforehand. Magicians who do mind tricks are called mentalists.
Your friend hides a coin in one fist behind their back while you look away. You turn round, study them for a moment, and say which hand it's in. Then you do it again. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 6 to 11 (grades 1st–5th), takes 5 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
This one is a genuine guess, with two real clues. People glance at the hand holding the coin without meaning to, and a hand held up by someone's head goes slightly paler than the other one.
What you need
A coin
How to do it
Turn away and ask your friend to hide the coin in one hand, behind their back.
Ask them to hold that hand up by their head and think "here it is" while you count to thirty.
Ask them to put both fists out in front, then turn round and look.
Watch their eyes first. People look straight at the hand with the coin.
Then check the colour. The hand that was up looks a little paler.
Tap the hand you've chosen and ask them to open it.
Magic words to say
“Coins are warm, and minds are loud. Think about where it is. Think hard. Don't tell me… I can hear that coin thinking.”
Pro tips
Be honest with yourself: this is reading people, not maths, so it will sometimes be wrong. That's why it's here.
Do it three times and get two right. Two out of three looks more like mind reading than three out of three does.
Good light helps a lot. In a dim room you only have the eyes to go on.
If something goes wrong
When you get it wrong, throw your hands up and say "your brain is too strong for me!" Then go again. Everybody wants to beat a mind reader, so they'll let you try all evening.
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.
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?
🔮 Prediction. You knew all along, or you read their mind. 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:Outs: when things go wrong. Have a joke ready and a spare trick in your pocket. Perform it and it counts towards the Coin Conjurer badge.
Questions about which hand? coin trick
What if my magic trick goes wrong?
It happens to every magician there has ever been. Stay calm and smile. Lots of tricks have an "out", a way to finish anyway, and every trick page here has one. If there's no way back, laugh, say "even wizards have off days", and go straight into a different trick.
How do magicians read minds?
They don't hear your thoughts. Mind-reading tricks use maths that always lands on the same answer, a secret peek, or a code agreed with a partner beforehand. Magicians who do mind tricks are called mentalists.