A Blog About Card Magic

If you often find yourself around shitty beer (read: in college), you’ve likely come across Pabst Blue Ribbon (insert tired hipster joke). The bottle caps are unique in that they have playing cards imprinted onto their undersides. Because I like obvious ideas, and because I do often find myself around Pabst bottles, here’s something to mess around with.

(Oh, and I had magician audiences in mind when I came up with this, as the presentational hook works a little better on the informed. But I don’t think it makes too much of a difference either way.)

(One more parenthetical. Think of the “coin to card” hook as a sort of mantra. It lends a nice archetypal feel to the trick, while also providing a very slight play on words. This bit of business was inspired by Marlo’s the Ace of Spades trick, and it’s something I do with a lot of tricks when performing casually.)

“Wanna see my coin to card trick?”

A card’s selected (2H), remembered, then lost back into the pack. Set the deck down. 

Produce a half dollar, magically or otherwise. 

“Ready? The coin to card trick. Watch, the coin to card trick.”

Pass your hand over the coin. It smoothly changes into a bottle cap. Just as the spectators are wondering what the fuck just happened, the bottle cap’s revolved around, revealing a 2 and a heart imprinted onto the underside. 

It’s a gag, wrapped in a magic trick and swaddled in an enigma. 

“But remember, it’s the coin to card trick…”

Set the bottle cap down.

With empty hands, you cut the tabled deck in half. Sitting on top of the lower portion of the deck is the half dollar. 

“Coin…”

Pick the half dollar off the cards and set it down.

“…to card.”

Take off the card that was immediately beneath the half dollar, and, doing your best Rosini, build up some terrifying dramatic tension before showing it to be the selection.

Finis.

*I’m really not sure if Pabst has any presence outside of America. So apologies if this means nothing to all you dirty foreigners out there. Don’t worry, it’s not like your missing out on a great idea or anything.

Here’s something I’ve been playing around with. I liked Eric Mead’s handling for “King Solomon’s Drink” (AoA) from Tangled Web, but I wanted to make the bottle production a bit more logical. 

Do a standard handling of the vanishing deck, with a selection and with a handkerchief. Once you make the entire deck vanish, produce a bottle of beer in its place. Start to drink from the bottle. But after taking a drink, pretend to taste something odd in the beer. You look down through the glass and notice something. Turn the bottle around towards the audience. There, staring at them through the glass, is their signed selection. 

Anyone wanna sell me their complete set of Marlo’s Magazine? 

My budget’s about twenty dollars. 

I love Studs, but they don’t stand a fucking chance against humidity. 

Oh great, now I’ll be quoted as saying, “I love studs, but they don’t stand… fucking.”

If you were a fan of the Magic Circle Jerk’s Magic Cafe poetry game (and who wasn’t, that was utter genius), then here’s a nice compilation blog Andy put together. This may be known to all, but it’s the first time I’ve encountered it, and it’s awesome. 

This one had me lol-ing like crazy. 

On the subject of non-card shit, check out pg. 95 of the Dover edition of Martin Gardner’s Table Magic for an extremely clever penetration of a coin through a plate. Despite just being a great method, it has two things going for it: it provides motivation for the otherwise hard-to-motivate-but-fun-to-use coin fold, and the penetration is completely hands off. 

By the way, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but if you’re like me and get a hardon for impromptu table magic stuff, and if you suffer from the misfortune of not owning Gardner’s Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic, then get this book. I think I picked my copy up for, like, five bucks. The material has that awesome classic close up feel, which I devour like a mad dog.