Fidget: A Coin Through T-Shirt

This week I’ll teach you this easy coin-through t-shirt trick. This is something I’ve been toying with since my early teens, back in the naughties. Bored in class, fidgeting between coin rolls. It’s 100% impromptu, can be signed and is surprisingly easy to perform on your t-shirt or someone else’s…

I reckon I was inspired by seeing Dynamo perform a coin through t-shirt on YouTube based on an old coin through napkin trick with a gimmicked coin. How do I know it was based upon an old coin through napkin trick?

Remarkably, I’d forgotten about this forum post by Dynamo until I sat down to write this newsletter. How wild that D hired me as a full-time consultant nine years after reading this post of his. I’m incredibly grateful that my early creative work was for such a kind talent.

The coin gimmick, originally released by Mark Mason and Bob Swadling, was later rebranded and re-released with the t-shirt handling by Penguin magic here.

The closest to this newsletter’s impromptu method is a gaffed version published by Rick Lax. This is an independent creation, and while Rick’s might be far more fooling, baby Rory’s version is impromptu. I say with complete confidence that someone somewhere has likely “created” something similar. In fact, Henri White just let me know that Ben Hart performs something similar, too.

Murphy’s magic wanted me to release this back in 2013, and I declined, assuming, with complete confidence, this is a trick everyone already performs.

Another eight years later and I continue to be delighted by the reactions of my magic friends to this little sleight.

Today’s post aims to share the small handling insights I’ve learned from over a decade of procrastinating at school and later at work with a coin and a t-shirt.

I’ll teach this with GIFs, so you do not need to exit the email.

1. The Hold

You must display the underside of your t-shirt for two crucial reasons. First, it’s a convincer that it’s a normal shirt and there are no extra coins. Second, it allows your thumb to wrap into the base of the t-shirt in a natural way. This is important because you need all the fingers on your second hand to be completely free and ready to catch…

2. The Drop

The coin never makes it up the inside of your t-shirt. Instead, the coin is dropped from your first hand to your second. Cover this drop with the bigger movement of your hand moving upwards under your t-shirt. Do not drop from a height. Drop the coin at the earliest possible moment and continue upwards with your first hand. You’re pretty much directly placing the coin into a finger palm.

3. The Grips

Keep that second hand on the base of your t-shirt. The final magic moment is not so impressive if your t-shit gets pulled upwards by your dominant hand. But by holding the fabric of your shirt still, you also get complete control over what the audience sees of your dominant hand underneath.

It would be best if you turned your dominant hand, palm facing yourself, such that the back finger knuckles of your first two fingers brush along the t-shirt. You want the spectator to feel like your hand and “the coin” is consistently in view. That’s why the outline must be seen on the way up without revealing your hand is empty.

4. The Cover

This is important. Your second hand now comes up to meet your dominant hand through your shirt. Your second hand will act as a cover when your dominant hand created a pincer grip and pushes through the fabric of your shirt. This pincer grip will form the landing site for the coin. Without the cover from your second hand, the audience will clearly see no coin is held by your dominant hand below the shirt.

5. The Pinch

I can teach this best by telling you how similar this is to the classic coin vanish against your pants leg. I demonstrate this unbelievably poorly below…

In this instance, we’re making a coin appear instead of disappearing…

The important note is that you should end pinching the fabric and not pinching the coin itself. By pinching the fabric, you hold the coin in place without the risk that the fabric might shift and reveal part of the shimmering coin on the outside early.

6. Empty Hands

Remove the dominant hand and naturally show that it is empty and that nothing else is falling out from behind the t-shirt. Do not say anything silly like, “The coin is now placed behind my ordinary t-shirt,” instead; let the audience lie to themselves—it’ll be more powerful.

7. Snap and Pull

Personally, I’ll often move my dominant hand in front of everything as I click to add to the visual confusion. You must pull with your second hand and wait until there’s good tension before releasing your pinch on the fabric. The pingback of the now loose t-shirt is crucial. It helps paint the visual recall in the minds of the audience of the coin being quite literally pulled through the t-shirt.

8. Quick Drop

Drop the coin into your dominant hand. Spectators will misremember this as the coin falling directly from the t-shirt into the hand. It shows the coin to be of normal weight and size immediately, and it erases the similarities between the start and end position of the snap and pull.

Some Considerations

• Use a t-shirt with no design that might look strange with the necessary fold.

• A bigger coin is not always better for this trick, but a borrowed coin is.

• Never demonstrate placing a coin below your shirt normally. The difference between this and the sleight-of-hand version is too noticeable.

• Yes, the spectator can grab the coin when you’re pinching it and pull it through with their own closed fist. No, it’s not a better trick.

• This is good to perform before the gimmicked spectator’s t-shirt version.

• Though the coin can be signed, I don't believe the trick withstands that level of over-proving. Perhaps sign the coin if it’s part of a larger routine.

• Try not to show this to magicians. This is one of those secrets that can spread like wildfire.