Alexander de Cova

Here it is—just for the record. I developed this in 1985 (I have wit­nesses). Mike Por­st­mann was instru­ment­al in it by sup­ply­ing me with an idea that had actu­ally noth­ing to do with it. But it sparkled my ima­gin­a­tion. The res­ult was this switch­ing tech­nique, which I have ever since used in dozens of ways.

Then I did this in my first lec­tures in Italy. Some Eng­lish, Scot­tish and Irish blokes remem­ber me doing this in the 80ties or 90ties at an well-known UK con­ven­tion. Jay San­key came out with his move and routines with it. Magi­cians cried “Theft!”. Not so. I think he prob­ably came up with it on his own. Or maybe he was inspired a little bit by me.

Jay made the money on it and got the recog­ni­tion and fame in the ‘scene’, so he was much cleverer than me. Now 30 years passed. I am older, I am no longer keen on being ‘the one’. I know my baby, and I know where it comes from. It’s just a move. No need to be embar­rassed or harsh with people.

I value Jay and respect him. We both actu­ally laugh about this. We met in Hol­land, and every­body expec­ted us to battle. But we did not. We just smiled know­ingly. Jay is too clever—and so am I. We are both very clev­er and smart 🙂

But then—who cares (except maybe Dani DaOrtiz)?

This is my all-time favor­ite uni­ver­sal switch for coins. It is a work­horse, that you will take to your real world shows and use when the oth­er fancy sleights stay at home in the stable. I use it with the ‘wild bend­ing coins’, for ‘copper/​silver’ and the even for fol­ded bills and bil­lets. Can­’t think of an easi­er and more reli­able one …

When Patrick Page saw this. he said to me after the lec­ture: “The lec­ture was crap, but I will use the switch as an end­ing for my coins through the table routine …” What an honor!

Just a remind­er to not for­get this stun­ning and fun-to-do tech­nique. I use this all the time when work­ing at the table. So simple, so con­vin­cing. Slydini was the master!

Also note my sub­lime audio editing—your hear all the back­ground noise of the pub we were record­ing in, as well as an ori­gin­al cough-by-decova. But then, I am just too lazy to re-record. It’s OK so, because the cut is what counts (not the audio cut).

A slight modi­fic­a­tion of the clas­sic Shaxon/​Lewis switch­ing envel­ope. Note how my take on it makes it pos­sible to dir­ectly retrieve the bill or bil­let from the pack­et prop­er, when pla­cing this into the pock­et. This is very use­ful for men­tal­ism, as you will see when you modi­fy Bob Cas­sidy’s bril­liant bil­let routine from The Art of Men­tal­ism. I heard that some big names in men­tal­ism already use this …

A little sub­tlety on the Hindu Force. Makes it much more con­vin­cing. Years later I found out that (appar­ently really all-know­ing) Max Maven had the same idea years before me.

What should I say? At least—I hit upon it by myself without Max’ help!

Here is how I make a simple card trans­pos­i­tion stronger and more mem­or­able. The main thing is the glass bit. By turn­ing the glass (thus indic­at­ing the trans­pos­i­tion), everything is much clear­er and impress­ive for the ordin­ary spec­tat­or, who is dis­trac­ted by food, whine and the women at the din­ner table …

P.S.: This used to be my open­er for many years in my table-hop­ping times. When you do it with a glass from the din­ner table, be sure to use an empty one! And yes, I always had a duplic­ate card in my deck—it made things sooo much easier.