Hi Mb - makes sense, but I thought comparing Stone's handling (or any of his known comments about the move) to Goshman's handling could help shed light on the origins of the variation.

Anyone?

Yes Conus and what you say makes sense as well. Hope someone can shed this light and make this all clearer. The lack of a definitive response here says that we might be on to something that needs a little straightening out beyond what people have known and or have simply accepted despite the evident ambiguity of the matter. Hope we get an answer soon as I know we have a lot of informed people on this forum.

If you want an independent citation on this stuff - I'd recommend asking Curtis Kam. In NYC we got to see the Buckley and Downs material performed regularly by Presto and Lou Lancaster and the closeup applications of clipping used by Sol Stone.

Is there something missing the the Sachs' discussion of clips and how to get into and out of them?

Folks with dry hands can more readily do a push action than folks with damp hands, who may choose to curl their fingers in a bit and kind of flip the coin around a finger to get into a clip.

Lou Lancaster used to demonstrate the bit where you make a fist, push a coin into the fist then show the hand empty using backpalm. A one fingered hold in the coin ala Downs or Tenkai has some initial advantages when learning the item.

This would be the between method rather than over.
Whether it's a rediscovery or original with Scotty I don't know.
I have seen a few people give him some credit for this method.

I agree with Jonathan on his comments with the Downs and Buckley material. I was a frequent user of sleights from both of them and there are a lot of things you could adapt to work for close-up.

Some time ago from a set of notes written by Tenkai, I learned what I think is his original handling, along with a second alternative, from that set of notes. It is two pages long and has no date, but it has some footnotes written in Japanese and is signed with the Tenkai seal (Japanese caligraphic soap stone signature seal).

The first method describes pushing the coin through the fingers between the middle and ring finger, as you would for a D**p B**k C**p only further toward the tips of the fingers. Once the coin is all the way through, the little finger grabs the coin to pull it down into position. The second method describes pushing the coin through the fingers between the pinky and ring fingers, again nearest the tips, then levering the little finger up and slightly behind the ring finger to get into the Pinch.

Like I said, that is they way I learned it from a set of Tenkai notes, and I use both methods to this day. Whether either of those were his absolute original ways of getting into the Pinch position, I cannnot say for sure. Perhaps Curtis can shed some more light on this?

I appreciate all the good comments here and I think we are pairing this matter down. Thanks to Conus as to the Sol Stone/2004 Genii info, my man Jaz and then leko as to the info on Scotty York and JT for the points toward the Buckley and Downs materials, and to you Dr. J as to Tenkai's actual original methods as to this move. Didn't know there were two ways of doing it like that. Thanks for the deeper view here authentically from Tenkai's manuscripts.

Now we just have to keep drilling down as to where the last variation of this actually comes from, the one that seems to be the most popular nowadays, the "Up & Over" method. Thanks all for your inputs. I'm sure more will be forthcoming.

I think Jonathan may have touched (intentionally or otherwise) on the origin of the Up & Over set-up when he noted that Goshman showed the move to Bobo. Either one of those two could be the originator of the Up & Over get-ready/set-up, and they may not. As for me, I have used that for the TP/GP when convenient, but I cannot say for sure where (or whom) it comes from. It would be interesting to find out!

I figured that they had both read Downs and understood the utility of a fourth finger clip that omits the first finger clip of a full backpalm.

I would quite agree. If one reads through some of the Downs material, one can see where they would have come up with that idea.

So did Downs come up with it (a one finger hold of the coin/pinch) or did Tenkai? And I'm just referring to Tenkai's initial uses of the move as the coin going "between" the fingers. Seems to me that the "Up & Over" method is good variation enough to have warranted better accreditation as to its more recognized usage, then(?) and now.

If someone had come up with (and someone most certainly did, is this not true?) with an easier, more flexible method that became more popularly used, you would think we would know precisely who did that...I mean this is not any such obscure move, many use it everyday, it's a magnificently deceptive move.

I really don't remember anyone else here asking about all this beyond the story as to how Goshman came into the mix. It has always been something I have thought about, something that didn't quite make sense to me. Glad I eventually came to push further on it here, especially since magicians like to be as precise as possible about such things. Hope we can track this down as it's been sitting in plain sight for many more decades than I've been here and seemingly without more proper address.

For that particular idea, it was Tenkai. Downs had a lot of adaptable material which would make it easier for some people to do.

Keep in mind that the back***m used by Downs did not call for the coin to actually be 'clipped' at any point. It called for the coin to essentially rest on the backs of the middle and ring fingers, then squeezed from the sides by the index and little fingers. In the proper position, you should be able to move the middle and ring fingers out from under the coin and it should remain suspended, held in place by the index and little fingers. If you get really good in practice, you can turn the hand over to show it empty on both sides by swiveling the coin and bending the two middle fingers to the other side of the coin. This is almost like what you would use in card manipulation to show the hand empty on both sides.

I hope this information helps.

Thanks Dr. J, good info...So would any of Down's "adapatable material" have included the "Up & Over" method?

In Scotty Yorks two booklets "Lecture" and "COINS." Scotty has this to say about the Up& over method. To the best of my knowledge, Tenkai developed the rear palm using the little finger grip. It has been used and extensively popularized in this country By Albert Goshman and is sometimes referred to as Goshman Pinch.

The CONVENTIONAL method of accomplishing this pinch has been to roll the coin over the tips of the fingers as in a conventional back palm, but allowing only the little finger to retain the coin.

So between Tenkai's notes Dr. J has. and Scotty's work. This leads me to believe either A) Tenkai had this third and final method for the pinch. or B) Goshman did indeed have his own handling of the pinch.

To confuse matters worse in Bobo's New modern Coin Magic, page 363 under the title TENKAI pennies. it says The right (hand) secretly slips its coin outside the hand with the aid of the thumb,where its held between the third and forth fingers in the GOSHMAN pinch.

In Goshman's book "Magic By Gosh he makes use of a sleight called Tenkai vanish. Which doesn't use any type of pinch but tells us that Goshman must have thought a lot of Tenkai's work. But, what comes to mind at least to me is. IF Goshman did in fact have his own handling of the Tenkai Pinch. A move which he popularized. Wouldn't he have included it within his own book?

I'm sure others had to have thought about this before, perhaps someone with more information than this with chime in. Based on the info above and until more info surfaces I'm going to go with A) Tenkai had this third Up & Over method.

Hope this helps,
Joe

Always a great help Vinny.

Thanks mystre, that's some good information from Scotty York. And you're right, it does confuse matters a bit as Bobo's seems to explain it in the "Up & Over" method...Hmmmmmmmmm. Perhaps Tenkai did have this as a variation but his notes do not suggest that, and so why wouldn't he have added it there to begin with? Based upon that, I think I would go along the lines of your 2nd suggestion, that of Goshman popularizing the move in the US and then probably changing it a bit as to the conventional variation we're discussing. In this I think it is very likely Gosh could've come up with the variation but not sure why he wouldn't have made better mention of it, even if he still linked it back to Tenkai which he probably would've done. Can't think of why he would'nt have mentioned this move in his book even if he had to say it wasn't his move exactly. He still would've been able to say "...but this is how I do it." Interesting.

So we know Tenkai came up with the initial move and he might've came up with the variation as well but that's not conclusive because as with Goshman's book where he doesn't mention it, in Tenkai's own written work specifically on the move it doesn't mention this more popular variation. It seems that JB Bobo mentioned, not drawing any particular attention to the original move but speaking of the more conventional way he saw it or it was explained to him (By who, was it Tenkai or Goshman in the Bobo Book? If indeed it was Tenkai and Goshman supposedly had popularized in the US, then possibly Goshman might've shown Tenkai his way of getting it done? Just a thought.). That part throws another monkey wrench in the soup for sure.

Again, whenever I have used and spoken of this move in my own work, I have always given credit to Tenkai and then referred to it as the "Goshman Method" of the move as to the "Up & Over."

Good stuff everybody.

Marion, there are two paths to the sleight you are winging on about:
1) Sachs Sleight of Hand which has some credits - or the older books in French if you're well read.
2) Tenkai who was working on his own.

The rest is simply folks learning from Downs (by way of Gaultier and/or l'Homme Masque), then Buckley, Alan Shaw and Milt Kort. The particular detail you are asking about is pretty clearly pre Vernon and even used by Vernon is his Spellbound finale in Ganson's Art of Close Up Magic vs the finger bend approach which is there in the old Leipzig item. To partial close the hand or not - to use the Downs (or older) approach vs the approach suggested in the older books.

By the time Al Goshman got to see the material it had settled into common use in NYC and Sol Stone was kind enough to show Al a nice coin trick, the sleights used and give proper mention to the gentleman from Japan.

What we are learning is that some folks have trouble reading and understanding what they read.

"...Winging on...???" Just trying to explore something here JT. If there was no questions here worth asking there would not be clearer answers now.

To assume that people are misreading or not understanding is quite a statement, when what everyone is doing here is simply trying to know better than they have so far as to this. I have no problem with giving complete credit to Tenkai as I've pretty much said that already but the variation was a question in my mind and it spurred others here to think a bit more deeply than they might have about it. Nothing wrong with that and no one has read everything to know everything. So perhaps if they look a little for something that may not be as lost to you as it is to them (me included), well at least they are trying to find something, trying to provide a clarity for themselves and others.

It may not be all that important to you based upon what you know but maybe you should've just said it like this earlier on instead of dropping seeds that cause people to look and search even further for something that you might know full well is not lost anywhere special. There were legit questions here as to this and information rendered that suggested anything but an absolute preciseness. Even your post here is no such straight-away easily navigated with the kind of choppy maps we use many times to track something down in this art. And funny, I didn't get that, "What we are learning is that some folks have trouble reading and understanding what they read," I didn't get that at all by this exercise and pursuit of clairty and truth...Anyone else? But y'know, I'm sure people learned something here in all this and that's what it's all about, is it not?

Other than all that, thanks for your post.

Marion, such a basic homework assignment is not so much important (read new) to me as it should be to those who are just now finding out about Tenkai, Gaultier, Decremps, Ponsin, Shaw, Buckley, both Bertrams... and wish to be considered serious students in this craft. If you get stuck in places doing the translation on your own and would like help with the French - ask Etienne

Please also keep in mind that back then it was considered a risk to go and put novel sleights and strategies into print so what they did was put the basic notion into text and leave the reader to apply it (to everything they could) rather then spell out all the applications explicitly. That's why the paddle move is so vague in Scot's book. That's why the use of a copper/silver gaff with matching [ was glossed over there as well. Same for the cups and balls work using the clip between ones third and fourth fingers. They weren't clumsy or stupid back then and they had the same desire to perform wonders as we do today.

Please honor them and their work by doing the basic readings and exploring what they have to offer you. Let their gifts inform your works today and should you happen to discover some novel combination of their time tested techniques that creates something special for you ... I'd like to see. Make Robert-Houdin proud by following his rules.

To honor your request about push versus flip - it goes way back to Downs and Leipzig in print and likely sits with what l'Homme Masque showed downs back then and independently what Tenkai discovered as he explored in the same way as Slydini explored over here.

If you take the time to study what folks wrote about Ramsay you likely have some delightful surprises waiting for you. Recently, as a sort of homework assignment I went after his "watch winder" trick as a challenge to find some way to update it. I just might have something. If it works as expected I'll put it up in a post. Not an ebook, DVD or such, just a post here. If Harry were still publishing Apocalypse perhaps it might merit a sentence at the back. Just keeping the oldies but goodies alive.

Again, thank you JT.

Thanks Jonathan. Gives me a better path to the history. (I was wandering all over the place! Unfortunately, though my Latin is impeccable - don’t ask! - and my Spanish is more than passable, French has always eluded me.)

Jim