Martin Sanderson is got a great one!

I would check out Hunter's Vitamin-C, it's only ten bucks so you really don't have much to loose. If you don't like that then you should try the L&L WGM BIll in Lemon DVD, you get about five routines from Pro's like Doc Eason and Bill Malone. You should be able to find something you like there so I highly reccomend checking these out before any of those high price routines.

As a point of information, Doc Eason performs Steve Spill's routine.

Just a quick chime in here. When we see something that costs what seems to be too much, we should ask...are we simply buying a METHOD, or a finished piece of STAGECRAFT?

It's not real hard to stick a bill in a lemon. The hard part is making it a piece of entertainment that people would want to pay to watch. With packages like Doug's, Cody's and mine you not only get really interesting and effective methods, but whole performance pieces.

When you buy - Alexander "The Final Answer"
- Fisher "Bet your Bucks"
- Malloy "Lemon Game"

Your buying a complete 10 min tested and re tested and fully worked and reworked routine.....I know I have all three of the above.

SO to say that FA , BYB or the lemon game are in the same league as many of the other options on the market is like comparing a Ferrari and a Chevy. With Fa you get a DVD that is almost 3 hrs long !!

Just a few thoughts

Cheers

Mike

I think your metaphor is off. Many of the other routines listed are on par with Scott's, Cody's and Doug's routines. Some of the other routines are also Ferrari's, but they don't come fully assembled.

My favorite part of magic is taking a method and infusing it with my personality and creativity to come up with my OWN routine. It may take a while but I find the challenge to be the most exciting part, especially when you are dealing with less than perfect methods; it forces you to combine several ideas until all the right pieces fall into place, often times you find the end result is far from what you started with.
For instance I too was a BIL geek, I love the idea of vanishing a bill and making it appear somewhere impossible and completely unexpected; but after many months of trial and error I know have the PERFECT impossible location routine with no lemon in sight. The expensive routines may be masterpieces, but they are not my creation; If I perform a masterpiece it should be MY masterpiece.

The first magic lecture that I ever went to was Barrie Richardson's. He completely fooled me with his Bill in Lemon. It would technically meet all of the criteria of the OP except for #1. The spectator is unaware of the lemon till the end of the trick and the lemon is cut. Great, great version. Well worth getting the book because there are lots of other great tricks within the pages.

Another version that I've heard no one mention is John Moerhing's that is in his "Texan Trixter" booklet. It plays very well. It is a very well written booklet and worth tracking down as well.

The Bill in lemon is probably the most quoted trick to me by a lay person its very strong.
My main problems with the routine are;
I don't like to get messy hands during a show, and
I don't want pockets smelling of lemons (due to juice leaking out of pre prepped lemons).

For this reason I have never found a good version for me. I am also not a big fan of switching lemons.

I am very tempeted to buy the Final Solution, from the writeups it sounds like it deals with the above really well, as some else will cut the lemon and the lemon can be in a bag or out in the audience.

Does anyone else know enough about the FA to confirm these asumptions?

The only downside is I usually switch my notes and this involves folding not rolling. (any good ideas here??)

I have the final answer rountine and I believe you will be satisfied with the product. if you do the rountine scott has on the dvd's their really is no mess during the rountine. my 2 cents

I have bill in kiwi....
but I want to buy THE LEMON GAME By Doug Malloy,
that's looks great.......

I'm not sure if the real work on Steve Spill's is available anywhere. But Doc Eason's verson of it is serviceable.

I love the load in bet your bucks you do it in front of everyone and they never see it.

Watch Spill do it and you won't see a thing. I think it's obvious he has some work on this that's not on the Doc Eason video, which is not hard to believe since Doc has admitted publicly that he didn't even get Spill's permission to publish the routine.

I have a Final Answer for sale £175 if anyone wants it. I will gladly post to the US as well. So you will get a real bargain at these exchange rates. Drop me a PM.
Both DVDs and gimmick. Never been used, just a small amount of practice and that's it. so I would say its as new.

Brett

I have a version that I have used to close my stand-up act for 15 years. It's a PDF download, only $7.50, and available here:

http://www.scottfguinn.com/generalmagic.asp

(2nd item on page)

Scott's routine I stop notch, its not a signed bill but with his routine it really doesn't matter and he'll even tell you why!

Where is a description of Scott's effect, I don't see it on the website.

The description is that a bill is borrowed, destroyed, and reappears inside a lemon that was inside a box that was given to a spectator to hold before the show started. The spectator writes the serial number on a dry erase board that remains in view, he lights the bill on fire and reads the serial number off the burning bill, he cuts open the lemon, he removes the bill, he reads off the serial number and it matches the one he wrote on the dry erase board.

For magicians the signed bill is a stronger effect than copying down a serial number, but what about laymen? Checking with a few friends I received a variety of opinions. I settled on the signature (Doc Eason method) and feel now that it was the right decision. Hundreds of performances later I am convinced that in the spectator's mind, the signature eliminates any possibility of a switch or duplicate bill, thereby increasing the overall mystery.