State Coin Designs Pro-Con

[magicbar]

I put this post up years ago and am seeking an update. I am seeking feedback on the impact of the 'state' designed quarters and other newly designed USA coins that impact one's choice of effect themes or use of gaffed coins. For instance, can we do a 'Winged Silver' when wings have turned to State emblems? Must one change their gaffed/dup coin considerations/usage because to ask for a [generic] coin is more difficult when a simple quarter may have 50 designs?

Conversely, has this change opened new doors? Will more designs and their components offer new and more presentational ideas just as winged/flying eagle design did for many coin effects? With the probability of 50 back designs, why labor the spectator to initial a coin? I have resorted to planting duplicates on the spec so they use a coin I know matches my gaff or used the 1-in-50 designs of a state coin as a reason to negate the use/need for a duplicate because 'randomly' they chose 1 of 50, like picking a card.

Lastly, are the pre-State design coins relegated akin to the older designs of the Morgan dollar era? Will a performer bringing out a winged back quarter been seen as using antique coins? - thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[Richard Kaufman]

Unless a person is from the particular state of the quarter's back design, I don't think anyone notices one design from another.

[fredreisz]

Kerry Pollock has an ingenious and electronically inventive feature effect with the state quarters. You can see him at the Hilton Head Island Magic and Comedy Club which he now owns.

I believe I saw in a forum that one of the new quaters will feature a face from the Mount Rushmore. Thus, you can have a coin which can be flipped and always come up heads! Or guarantee if you flip two coins you will have two (or more) heads.Peace... Fred (Reisz)

[Brad Jeffers]

Here is a variation of an old trick that can be done with good effect, using the State Quarters. 50 different State Quarters (one of each State) are used.

You write a prediction on a slip of paper and give it to a spectator to hold. The 50 different Quarters are shown and mixed in a cup. The spectator dumps out the coins on the table. All the Quarters that land heads up are removed. This process is repeated until only one coin remains. The prediction is revealed to be Georgia, which matches the State on the last coin remaining.

A minor miracle!

The prediction can be any of the 50 States that the magician wishes and can be different at each performance.

I am sure that the method is apparent to most.

As I said, it is a very old trick.

[erdnasephile]

Brad's idea is one worthy of exploring.

However, the critical part of that trick is that the magician must think of something interesting to say during the "lulls" in the selection process. If the performer does not consider in advance that chance sometimes does not favor a speedy resolution, the result could be rather boring.

Starting out with 50 would seem to increase the chances of that happening.

[Jonathan Townsend]

State quarters - in short - no.

Distracting if the detail is noticed and confusing when the coin shows "tails". Is that a Korean coin?

[Brad Jeffers]

Distracting if the detail is noticed and confusing when the coin shows "tails". Is that a Korean coin?

Yeah ... I guess I neglected to take into account the fact that U.S. citizens are continually mistaking the State Quarters for Korean coins.

But one must realize that the 35 billion State Quarters in circulation have only been around for 14 years.

It takes time for people to get accustomed to new things.

[Spellbinder]

Wiz Kid Qua-Fiki loves playing around with matrix, and in his new "Impromptu Matrix" as described in The Wizards' Journal #25, he shows how he uses four different state quarters borrowed from spectators. In most versions of matrix, you depend on the coins being anonymous and interchangeable, but Qua-Fiki began having spectators initial their coins using different color stickers and that opened the doors of a new way of organizational management for the four quarters in Matrix.

As it is described in Jim Gerrish's ad that he wrote for Qua-Fiki: "Using Qua-Fiki's Organizational Matrix techniques, you can use state-back quarters in interesting ways. The quarters can be signed by the spectators, tagged with a seal and spectator initials for identification, so that you can send the quarter marked by (for example) Harry Blackstone back to the state of Texas (on the quarter) via a magic carpet ride. When it's time for Harry to go, that particular quarter vanishes from one place and ends up at the airport. It's a way of personalizing the experience where each of the coins has the name of a spectator and they can watch closely to see their "personal" coin vanish and reappear as scheduled. Each quarter vanishes in a different way and NONE of the quarters vanishes with card snapping and flip-flapping, for those who know what that means."

[Jonathan Townsend]

"Stop the show - is that a Canadian quarter?"

Some of us learned about detail/focus back when the bicentennial quarters were around.

... and as you can see the number of leaves on the state tree has increased by one...

usually the idea is for focus to be on the performer and incidentally on the props.

"nice trick but can you do it with regular coins?"

IMHO making an incidental detail of borrowed coins a part of the act can be successful if you have rapport and the audience is sure where to focus - and slow down the show in places you won't want if anything goes amiss. A distracting detail IMHO.

"Oh I did not mean to turn over your shell coin I was just wondering what state it was from".