The following is an excerpt from Conover by Tim Conover and Eric Mead
Watch and learn this routine in rare video footage of Tim Conover at the end of this article.
Tim opens a small coin purse and removes a copper coin that is tossed on the table for later. Tim then removes four silver dollars and sets the purse aside. Someone is asked to hold the four silver dollars tightly in their closed fist. Tim reaches out and plucks one of the coins through their flesh. They open their hand to show they are only holding three coins. This is repeated, with Tim pulling a coin through the back of their hand, so now only two coins remain in their fist. He explains why they can’t feel the coin as it is removed by doing the effect on himself. Two coins are closed in his hand, and he removes one through the back of his fist, leaving only one coin inside. Finally, he proposes to do it with someone else using only the one remaining silver coin. Someone is asked to hold the silver dollar in their fist tightly. To remove a single coin from their hand, he says he must distract them, which is why he has the copper coin. Tim slowly closes his fingers over the copper coin. He plucks the silver dollar from their hand and sets it down. He now causes the copper coin in his hand to vanish completely, and it appears inside the spectator’s closed fist, where the silver coin was a moment ago.
Background
On seeing Tommy Wonder’s Socked Coins (Wonder, Tommy. Visions of Wonder. DVD, L&L Publishing, 1996), Tim instantly fell in love with it and wanted to perform the routine. He learned it, performed it briefly, but stopped doing it because he felt it had a fatal flaw. Anyone seeing Tommy Wonder present it would likely disagree because, in his hands, it was a superbly entertaining and mystifying coin routine. Wonder’s effect is exactly as described above, but at the end when the copper coin appears in the spectator’s hand, it is a gaffed coin that cannot be examined. Tim did not like ending this powerful routine with a gaffed coin in the control of a spectator, because this meant the performer had to manage the situation carefully at the precise moment when, in Tim’s view, you should be stepping back and giving them space to let them experience the magic. Tommy Wonder managed this moment by immediately taking the coin from them to display it to all, and in his hands it was a natural and low-risk way to handle this potentially difficult situation.
