When you’ve mastered the French Drop, you can progress to this little baffler. You take a coin and tap it with a pen. The coin then disappears. You take the cap off the pen and then apparently shake the coin out of it. It’s a quick magical sequence which looks absolutely impossible.

Let’s assume that the pen is in your breast pocket, where it can be easily reached with your left hand. Borrow a coin and hold it at the right fingertips in position for the French Drop (1). Say, ‘This coin’s very deceptive. Looks solid, but watch this...’

Apparently take the coin in the left hand, but actually execute the French Drop (2). Take out the pen with the right hand and use it as a wand to tap the left hand. Open the left hand to show that the coin has disappeared. The coin is actually finger-palmed in the right hand (3).

Tell the spectators, ‘Looks as if the coin has disappeared, but actually –you’re not going to believe this – it’s inside the pen!’

This clearly doesn’t make much sense because there’s no way the coin can fit within the diameter of the pen. Nevertheless, make a play of handling the pen so that the spectators truly believe that your hands are otherwise empty.

With the right hand pull the cap off the pen and turn it over so that it is held vertically between the thumb and the fingers, the open end of the cap facing the floor. Shake the cap over your left palm as if trying to dislodge something. ‘Wait a minute’. On the second or third shake release the coin. ‘There it is!’ It looks as if the coin has suddenly popped out of the pen cap.

Notes

Once you understand the handling of the trick, you can choreograph it to suit yourself. The main thing to learn is to be open and easy with the moves. If working over a table, then allow the coin to drop on to it when it reappears: but if you’re standing when you perform you might ask a spectator to hold out their hand before you remove the cap from the pen. Then give it a shake and let the coin fall on to their palm for a surprise finish.

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