Money for nothing & the tricks for free
The Melbourne Magic Festival is in full swing and I’ve just finished a week of my one man show ‘Scamapalooza’.
Sharing a dressing room with various rabbit pullers, box jumpers and dove wranglers as got me thinking more and more about the role of magic in scams.
Many of the tools in the magician’s tool kit come from the world of swindler. The second deal, the pass, the topit and the cups & balls all started as swindles before becoming conjuring tricks and methods.
But what about the opposite? Can a magic trick become a scam?
In Eric Garcia’s novel, Matchstick Men, the story begins and ends with a magic trick played out as a scam. Two grifters argue you in a diner about the sleight of hand abilities of one of them. The would be magician offers to perform a simple card trick on a nearby sucker.
A card is selected by the sucker and then returned to the deck which is shuffled. The cards are slowly dealt, face up, on the table. The magician/grifter reaches the selected card…but keeps on going. He appears to have missed the card, turning over several more cards. He stops.
“The next card I turn over will be yours.”
The grifter’s friends mocks him again, suggesting he’ll get it wrong.
“Alright…$100 says the next card I turnover is yours.”
With the grifter’s encouragement, the sucker, knowing his card is already turned over, takes the bet. The grifter reaches out, takes the mark’s card from the pile on the table and turns it face down!
Evil magician refuses to pay for clipart.
In one of his television specials, magician Paul Zenon performed a trick on a bartender where a signed and borrowed 10 pound note vanished from his hands and appeared in the bartender’s cash register.
He then reveal the secret. After vanishing the signed note, he drop it on the group. A confederate came and picked up the note and took it to the other end of the bar to another bartender. He then spent 10 pounds on a beer getting 7 pounds change. The second bartender put the note in the cash register where the first bartender found it.
The scam? The confederate paid for the beer and got seven pounds change from the borrowed note! They got they cash and beer for free!
One of my own scam magic tricks also happens at the cash register. Short on change for a tip, I pick up a $2 coin from the bar’s tip jar. I then pick up 5c piece. Waving the 5c over the $2, the coin changes into a second $2 coin. I put the $4 into the jar and walk off. The bartender feels like I’ve given them a $1.95 tip.
In reality, when I pick up the first $2 coin from the jar, I also secretly take a second $2 coin. Using a little sleight of hand (a bobo switch for my magician readers) I appear to change the 5c into $2. When I drop the $4 in the tip jar, I’m just returning their own money to them.
And I walk away with their 5c.
Hey, profit is profit.
Paul Zenon performs a hilarious magic trick that looks like a scam…but isn’t.
2 Comments to
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
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Yes you can.
I’m afraid I don’t have a Twitter acount.