The Genii Forum

I have been working with my Phoenix Pocket Watch and have come up with a presentation using an Egg Bag. Show the broken watch and the Egg Bag and talk about the classic smashed and restored watch trick and that this was your first try and failure (indicate broken watch). Now present a classic egg bag with the watch. There is work here that is interesting because you can hear the watch jingle in the bag, but then it vanishes and the noise stops. Since we are in the open, read between the lies and you will release that the effect ends with the restored watch which doesn't jingle. Exactly when you restore it facilitates the vanished watch being silent. THOUGHTS

Try it with a small paper lunch bag - ungimmicked. At the end, tear up the bag then remember you still need the bag for your sandwich and restore it for that use and end. The watch is restored to your pocket and all's well with the world.

Modern attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity often treat the four-dimensional space-time fabric of Einstein’s theory as emergent, a kind of hologram cooked up by more abstract quantum information. If so, both time and space ought to be approximate concepts...

...“Could it be that time is an illusion and smooth time is an emergent consequence of us trying to put events into a smooth order? It is certainly an intriguing possibility that is not easily dismissed.”

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-science-of-clocks-prompts-questions-about-the-nature-of-time-20210831/ Natalie Wolchover

Jon Pendragon wrote:I have been working with my Phoenix Pocket Watch and have come up with a presentation using an Egg Bag. Show the broken watch and the Egg Bag and talk about the classic smashed and restored watch trick and that this was your first try and failure (indicate broken watch). Now present a classic egg bag with the watch. There is work here that is interesting because you can hear the watch jingle in the bag, but then it vanishes and the noise stops. Since we are in the open, read between the lies and you will release that the effect ends with the restored watch which doesn't jingle. Exactly when you restore it facilitates the vanished watch being silent. THOUGHTS

It sounds like a fabulous idea to me. Really spices it up from what would otherwise be exclusively a restoration effect, albeit a great one. With this routining, you now have the auditory elements (the jingling before the restoration and the silence thereafter, which adds mystery and drama), plus a vanish, a reproduction and a restoration. I think it's important that the routining be such as to eliminate any possibility in their minds of a switch and/or that sleight of hand was used. Short sleeves or rolled up sleeves strikes me as a necessity, given the way laymen think. There should ideally be an acquitment at the end that proves conclusively that this was the one and only watch. Perhaps you might even consider having them initial a small post-it which would be stuck onto the watch (if that's possible). Since they cannot be permitted to do a full examination of the bag, perhaps you could strike the bag sharply on the table or on their outstretched hands, allow them to reach into the bag and feel around (both in the beginning and at the end), and also, after the restoration/reproduction, maybe direct them to clap their hands on the bag to prove its emptiness, while you hold it by the very tips of the thumbs and forefingers, thereby implicitly proving there is no palming involved either.

All good ideas. I like the Bag finale that allows the hands free production by a spectator. Quantum Mechanics.... yes Schrodinger's watch in the box, Broken or Working, at the same time.

Check out Jim Gerrish's inexpensive version with ANY pocket watch, including a $25 Mickey Mouse Watch which has pieces of Mickey dangling from the watch-works before it gets restored. Then once the watch is restored, you can use the same watch to perform the prediction when a spectator randomly turns the hands around when the cover is closed, and you can tell what random time was set. It's in The Wizards' Journal #45: https://www.magicnook.com/WizJournal/WJ-45ALL.htm#smashingMickey

Edward Of course, I am still working out the routines physical beats, but quantum mechanics, gravitational wave time distortion, Einstein's time dilation as you approach the speed of light, that's all good material to explore in the presentation.

Interesting, what about an effect where the watch is only broken inside the bag? Per Schrodinger, once we look, all we find is a restored watch? They can reach into the bag and feel pieces, (warn them to mind the broken glass) but when you take out the watch, it’s unbroken, and the bag’s empty (and silent).

Puts a new spin on their examination of the bag, and feeling inside the bag, and even gives a new reason for the bag in the first place.

Maybe, finally, at the end, they reach into the bag and pull out pieces. You show the bag otherwise empty, then swap the empty bag for the pieces, you vanish the pieces, and they reach in and find the restored watch?


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I am a big fan of the egg bag but I am astonished at the amount of magicians, including eminent ones, who tell me they detest the trick. I use the Roy Benson finish of producing 5 or 6 eggs written up in the Classic Secrets of Magic but to my surprise and puzzlement even though I have seen dozens of performers do the egg bag I have never seen anyone use this climax even though it has been in print for years. Peter Marrucci once wrote up an idea for it in the Linking Ring and it must be the only thing I have ever used from that magazine! He suggested the last egg produced for the Benson finish should be a little plastic duck! I have used this for years and it gets a great laugh!