Rabbit Thieves – an introduction to the royal road to coin magic

Introduction The Royal Road to Card Magic, available at lybrary.com, is a classic piece of magic literature. Rather than being a book of tricks, The Royal Road to Card Magic systematically builds the beginner’s skills, starting with the simplest card sleights and gradually introducing more difficult sleights. Furthermore, rather than just teach a bunch of card sleights, the book teaches tricks that feature those sleights, so that the beginner can practice using those moves in a meaningful context. In recent years Roberto Giobbi has updated the concept of a systematic course in magic with his Card College series. If you’re into card magic, I heartily endorse both books. When I first started in magic, I was fascinated by T. Nelson Downs, “The King of Koins,” and wanted to perform the Miser’s Dream and coin magic on stage, yet when I first showed my mentor Great Scott (Scott F. Guinn) my restaurant repertoire, he told me, “You’re doing all cards. You need more variety.” I was captivated by coin magic, but I was doing all card tricks—why was that? I was lacking a coin book like The Royal Road to Card Magic or the Card College series. Bobo’s Modern Coin Magic and Richard Kaufman’s Coin Magic are great resources, but they are full of tricks, and don’t lead the beginner systematically from simpler to more difficult sleights, while featuring solid, accessible tricks within the skill range of the beginner to teach those sleights. There are so many coin tricks to wade through, some of which require sleeving, or lapping, or special, expensive gimmicked coins, or are excessively difficult even if they aren’t deceptive, or have very poor angles. I think that I was where many beginning and even intermediate coin workers are, being able to execute a bunch of sleights, but not really having any deceptive, practical routines that used those sleights.