Thanks, Mobius303.

motown,
"Attraction" is incredible. Thanks for reminding me about it.

Full Frontal Assault is one of my all time favorites. It's got just everything all in one routine.
As for his performing style--in the intro to Unexplainable Acts he states that his patter is not meant to be taken seriously. I tried once performing Trio with his patter and I felt really stupid.

I'm with J-mac on the shell and copper/silver, that's all one really needs. I had two copper/silvers but lost one. I bought them specifically for a Kurtz routine from the book, Four Fisted.

Spend the money, get the best (Lassen/Schoolcraft, whoever) shell, copper/silver and flipper you can afford, and leave it at that. These $700 gimmicks with shells on top of shells layered in magnets and then more shells are interesting mechanical marvels, but a completely unnecessary expense.

That being said, I completely understand the allure of finely crafted, fancy coin gimmick.

Hey fonda, I have to pretty much agree with you, Mac and Vernon, too here...I've come across quite a few gaffs on my journey and admire many of them for their trickiness and workmanship, and then they sorta fall silent for me, becoming more collectors item than magic. I did get some good use out of the X[ and C/S coin in some things, but that's it. Think Vernon says it well, "Shells on top of magnets on top of more shells, etc." Nice little gizmos for sure but that's all folks.

*Happy 4th of July and God Bless America

The sleights look good.

Now that you have them to use in routines - what kind of routine would you like?
ex: the changes serve well in a 3x3 transpo done standup like Roth's Purse and Glass.

Thanks Jonathan

As far as how to use the sleights, I'm not sure. In general I prefer simple, straightforward routines when performing. Ive always seen these knuckle buster sleights as literally an exercise for my hands, or maybe even a rite of passage in coin magic, so to speak.

I really respect guys like, Curtis Cam, who go out and actually entertain people with difficult material.

Curtis, Kainoa, Reed... this generation is doing well for putting sleight of hand into action while being entertaining.

IMHO it's not so much about getting through the moves but rather having the audience miss all the sleights and respond to the basic effect.

Hmmm...3+3 transpo done standup like Roth's Purse and Glass....sort of like Kurtz' Penny Lane from The Collected Alamanac.

Yes, by the early 1980s the coin guys were exploring the theme - among others that can be seen in CoinMagic. Kind of tough not to mix two items from the lecture and see what you get. Gary Kurtz's routine may have been the first of that kind to hit print.

Yea I have played with it And Have a Few Handlings Some in print, some not!

Completely forgot about Penny Lane. Learned it years ago. Beautiful routine.

A lot of magic going on in Penny Lane. How about Relentless? That's another one that has everything all rolled into one grand coin routine. Just the coins thru table part is enough to make me happy, though the whole is a lot of fun. I saw him do this at a lecture in a restaurant next to Al's Magic in D.C., I believe late 90's, somewhere in there. I asked him if he was going to to Flurious and he said he doesn't do it anymore. "I'm a mentalist now," he told me.

One has to respect the man's decision to completely drop magic for mentalism but for sure, he must have treasures upon treasure that were never put in print etc. We'll have to make due with he documented, which is an enormous amount of brilliant material

I own the Manuscripts put out by Steven's. In fact, I am going through them today to re-learn his c**ter t**r. Another brilliant take on a classic.

Gary's style and speach is too fast for me. I'm a René Lavand type of person.
This being said, Gary's magic was outstanding and his booklet "Leading with your head" is nothing short of brilliant.

I know Gary had some background in dance and acting and his magic reflects that as it appears rehearsed and choreographed and that is probably why his magic looks so good. His writings on misdirection is very insightful and aftter reading them and watching his magic you can see it at work. While it would be nice to be a "purist" the truth is some magic appears more magical with the use of gimmicks if you can overcome the inherent problems with some gimmicks as mentioned in the earlier posts. It is partially because of the need to overhandle the coins (sometimes) that presents a negative appearence on the pure slieght of hand methods? But with good routining and choreography this can be overcome. And with misdirection all things are possible someone said. I like Gary's work so much because if he did not say a word when performing his routines you would still understand the effect and what was taking place IHMO. If your magic is so difficult to understand that you need to explain it then there is work to be done also only IMO.

It's a shame we lost Gary to the mentalism side.

Yes I was fortunate to pick up some f his old lecture notes at a Magic Castle swap meet in the late 90s. Most of which later was put into his book, Unexplainable Acts. Just so happens Kaufman and Co. has it available again.

Cheers,

Bill