The position

Sit at a table. Bend your left arm and rest the left elbow on the table, with the left forearm upright and the left hand near your left ear or collar. This is the position you return to each time.

  1. The first try. Hold the coin in your right fingers and rub it against your left forearm, just above the elbow. After a few seconds of rubbing, let it slip from your fingers and fall onto the table. Act mildly annoyed.
  2. Honest pick-up. Pick it up with your right hand and try again. This first drop teaches the audience the routine: coin falls, right hand picks it up.
  3. The second drop. Let it fall again. This time, bring your left hand down and pick up the coin with it, as if helping. Your left hand now appears to place the coin into your right hand, but keeps it. Close the right fingers as if you received it.
  4. Return to position. Lift the left arm back into place, left hand near your collar. As it gets there, drop the coin down the back of your collar or simply hold it, finger palmed, behind your neck.
  5. The third try. Rub your right fingers (empty, but closed as if holding the coin) against the forearm. Rub a little longer than before. Slowly lift the fingers away. Nothing there.
  6. Show both hands. Show the right hand empty. If you dropped the coin down your collar, the left hand can be shown empty too.

Why it works: the first drop is honest, so the second one looks like the same accident. By the time the left hand helps, the audience has stopped watching the pick-up and is waiting for the rubbing.

The false transfer

Step 3 is the only move. Practise passing the coin from left hand to right for real ten times, then fake it ten times, until the two look identical. The right hand should close at the same speed whether or not it receives anything.

Bringing it back

If the coin is held in the left hand, you can reach behind your neck and produce it, or reach to a volunteer’s ear: see the coin from behind the ear. If it went down your collar, leave it there until later.

Angles

Do it seated, with people in front of you and to your right. Someone standing behind your left shoulder sees everything.

Credit where due: A long-standing classic of beginner coin magic, taught in many standard books under names such as the elbow vanish or coin through the elbow.

Next: The paper fold coin vanish