Jinx Switch credit question...

[Jeff.Prace]

Hey everyone,

I am working on a trick and need help finding a proper credit.

Basically, the move is a switch of a playing card underneath a wallet. One hand holds the closed wallet with a hidden playing card directly underneath it. The other hand openly holds a previously shown card. As you transfer the wallet from one hand to the other, the hidden card is brought into view as the previously shown card is now hidden directly under the wallet. The wallet is then put away in your pocket.

I was citing this as an application of the Jinx Switch. However, I am aware that in a Jinx Switch, the cards are usually replaced on top [of the deck] and not the bottom. Is there a better switch I can cite here?

Also, since a wallet is involved as opposed to a deck of cards, do you think anyone else deserves to be credited?

Any help is appreciated!

Jeff

[Pete McCabe]

Don Alan's "Big Deal" switch is related and might be worth considering.

[Jeff.Prace]

Thanks, Pete! If I researched correctly, Don Alan's switch uses a jumbo card for cover - just the thing I was looking for. If anyone else has any input regarding an earlier reference or anything related, please let me know!

[Max Maven]

What you are describing is -- as you've indicated -- not the Jinx Switch. Rather, it is a switch of a small item using the transfer of a larger item for cover and to cause the viewer to lose track of the switched object's location. As such, it goes back much farther than its use with cards by Don Alan and others.

I would guess that it was first devised as a billet switch, probably in the latter part of the 1800s, with no specific inventor known.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Is there an early reference to the basic principle of turning over a larger item to effect the switch? The Buddha papers would be an example of that principle in use.

[Jeff.Prace]

The switch in question does not involve turning the larger item over. And thank you for the information Mr. Maven!

[Jon Racherbaumer]

Max of course is correct when you consider the BASIC action.

Most switches of this type have been done with different kinds of cover with both hands moving, making momentary contact, and then moving away from each other. The "cover" in play either distracts or literally covers (conceals) the switch at the critical instant it occurs.

In Don Alan's BIG DEAL, there are two important aspects that make it fabulously deceptive. (1) As soon as the objects (cards) are engaged and the switch is about to occur, both hands turn PALM DOWN, all three cards turn over, and both hands separate. (2) More important, the audience immediately focuses on the faces of the two cards they see--the jumbo card AND the switched-in card, noting that they also match. This overpowers anything they previous saw, thought they saw, or assumed happened during the simultaneous disclosure of the two cards.

Similar mechanics have been done with other objects such as cards and coins (in Matrix effects, for example.)

Need it be said that "the devil lies in the details"?

Onward...

[Bill Mullins]

Most switches of this type have been done with different kinds of cover with both hands moving, making momentary contact, and then moving away from each other. The "cover" in play either distracts or literally covers (conceals) the switch at the critical instant it occurs.

That being the case, should the top change be considered, if not a credit-requiring precedent, then at least a psychological ancestor of these switches?

[Jonathan Townsend]

Most switches of this type have been done with different kinds of cover with both hands moving, making momentary contact, and then moving away from each other. The "cover" in play either distracts or literally covers (conceals) the switch at the critical instant it occurs.

That being the case, should the top change be considered, if not a credit-requiring precedent, then at least a psychological ancestor of these switches?

Conjuring has history of thousands of years. The basic switch using cover likely goes back most of the way.

The situation where what you switch out is identical to the place you put it - as well as identical to the place after you palm off the item is a special case.

Let's not do special pleading of that sort - it makes us look even more "special".

[Bill Mullins]

It seems to me that all of these moves (top change, Jinx switch, Don Alan's switch, plus other moves like loading a Mullica wallet) all have a commonality:

1. Bring the hands together, each hand holding something(s). One of the items being held is there as a Macguffin (the big card, the bulk of the deck, etc.).

2. As the hands meet, misdirect.

3. While the hands are together, do something sneaky; i.e., something moves from one hand to the other (and/or from the other hand to the one).

4. Bring the hands apart, each still holding something, with no one any wiser.

While the "sneaky" move and what the hands are holding may be different with each move, there is still a consistency of choreography, psychology, demeanor, etc. that must be present for them all to be effective.

It is possible to get so worked up in the trees of crediting to miss the forest, and to me, the original creative thinker is the person who first started working this problem -- everyone else is standing on his shoulders.