The magician asks their friend for a quarter. Without touching the coin, they hand the friend a sharpie and ask them to draw a smiley face upon it. When they are done, the magician carefully takes the coin and writes the spectator’s initials on the other side.

Next comes the vanish, right at the fingertips, the coin seems to melt into thin air. Pausing just long enough to let the vanish sink in, the magician leads the friend across the room.

At the far side, resting on a table is the spectator’s phone. Before the magician can point it out, the spectator notices that their phone is hovering millimeters above the table. Something is under the phone—it’s the coin. The magician hasn’t been anywhere near the phone. In fact, they gesture for the spectator to carefully lift it up off the coin.

The friend reacts with joy as the phone is removed to reveal their quarter with their initials upon it. The magician picks up the coin and delicately flips it over to reveal the smiley face on the other side. It’s worth noting that the magician is wearing short sleeves and their hands are totally empty besides the coin as they show both sides.

What’s amazing is that you can immediately hand out the coin to the friend for a thorough inspection.

That’s it, that’s the trick.

This is the off week between projects that I mentioned a few weeks ago. I’m in Los Angeles, but I moved out to Pasadena. It’s nice here. I’ve been going on big walks, doing a lot of personal writing, and working with subscribers on 1:1 video calls. I’m excited about the remaining five calls this week, and I’ve added some availability for June if you’d like to book a call with me to discuss your magic.

I highly recommend this podcast episode. I listened to it this week. Skip straight to the interview at the end with Pulitzer prize-winning author Matt Richtel for a conversation on creativity and a not-so-prize-winning song about sex.

He talks about the environment you must create to inspire creativity. I’ve been in a few writers’ rooms recently. There’s a moment in the podcast when they talk about these rooms and what we can all learn from them. I totally relate to this. It’s really lovely and he’s able to articulate a lot of my thoughts surrounding the creative environment. I plan to read his new book on the subject.

You might not know this, but for the last six years, I’ve only written on television magic shows. Whether that’s JSBC’s The Amazing Magicians, Victor Mids: Mindf*ck, or Justin Willman’s Magic For Humans—my job is entirely creative. Rather than build and produce the magic, it’s almost always been about creating, writing and refining magic and tv formats.

For me, I walk to inspire personal creativity. I walk everywhere. It helps my mental health and it really gets my creativity going. I was walking just now, to clear my head before returning to the AirBnB to write the article you’re currently reading. I left not knowing what I would write about and I returned with a handful of options.

I decided I will teach one of these:

1. An impossible self-working addition to any cross-cut force.

2. How to predict any word on a printed Cards Against Humanity card.

3. How to easily replace the serial number of a bill on the fly.

4. My perfect method for duplicating a signature (with ten years of testing).

5. How to make a signed coin appear literally anywhere.

Don’t panic—I’ll teach paid subscribers all of these over the next few articles. For now, though, I’ll teach the coin trick. It’s lovely. The signed coin really can appear anywhere you like.

The Secret

It’s so devilishly simple, and I love it so much. You can carry this with you and be ready always. Let’s get into the secret…