I have a question about Todd Lassen coins specifically the gimmicks he made for the Whisper affect by Roger Klause.
I purchased Whisper recently and the advertisement stated that the gimmick was made by Todd Lassen.
I received the package and the booklet does specify that the gimmicks were made by him. However, I always thought that all of Todd Lassen's gimmicks were hallmarked. Is that a true about the whisper gimmick?
I'm also concerned because the cut out in the bottom of the stack is kinda roughly machined.
The date on the coins in the stack is 2000 but the remaining coins are different dates. Is that the way they were made?
I know he passed away in 2001 so that's the reasons I checked the dates.
I paid extra because the statement was that they were made by him and I'm getting concerned.
Any help or input would be gratefully appreciated. If someone actually has the gimmick and can verify what I see, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Tom

Todd passed in 2021, not 2001.

There's a lot of stuff he made that wasn't hallmarked. I'm not sure when he started doing that more regularly but I think it was in the early-mid 2000s.

Even later than that there was no guarantee you'd get hallmarked coins - I've got an East African Dime shell set I bought direct from him that's not hallmarked.

I don't have Whisper, so I can't speak to whether or not it should be hallmarked, but given the timing it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't.

Thanks for the information, inigmntoya. And thanks for correcting me, that was a typo on the date.

He did make stuff for the commercial (over custom) market. At one point he even had a website for it. I believe he did have someone working with him on the commercial stuff.

He had a couple different apprentices over the years, none fully worked out.

He called the commercial stuff "Rad Clad" as they were all made with common copper/nickel clad coins vs silver.

He used a different hallmark for those, "LCC&N".

My best guess for that is "Lassen Commercial Coins and Novelties".

All good information. The coins in the Whisper gimmick I have are all clad. Actually the hold isn’t even round. Almost like when the hole was machined it got warped.

The idea for the Whisper gaff supposedly came from the late Bob White. When he found out that Roger was selling them he wasn't happy about it. I never purchased it but isn't it a quarter stack that rattles a bit?

The stack does rattle once during the routine, but not because of the stack itself. It's a nice added touch.

As far as the single penny bit is concerned, I think the basic idea goes back at least to Al Baker, if not even further. In one of his books, he noted that in his opinion, having a stack of pennies appear when the stack of quarters disappears was a basic weakness in the trick, since it's pretty obvious where the pennies came from. So he worked out a routine with just one penny. The "Whisper" effect takes that idea a step further, with very good results.

My only criticism of "Whisper" was the method for the initial switch-in of the gimmick. Like many other methods, it involves a one-handed switch, with both the gimmick and the loose quarters being momentarily placed in the same hand. That always seemed a little awkward to me, as well as being a pretty good guarantee for a “traffic jam.” But there's a fine two-handed switch for this effect described in Tarbell -- basically a Shuttle Pass from one hand to the other. You FP the gimmick in one hand and hold the overlapping loose quarters in the other hand. After the Shuttle Pass, you display the gimmick in one hand and FP the loose quarters in the other hand. But to the specs, it only looks like you took the loose quarters and placed them in your other hand to square them up into a stack. It's very logical, natural and very convincing. And the dirty hand with the FP’d quarters can then pick up the gimmick at the fingertips, also providing good cover for the FP’d quarters. SETH

No. Rattle is the wrong word. I don't want to expose anything but it is not a rattling sound.

Thanks for the correction, you are right. I guess it's more of a "clink" noise that somewhat simulates the sound of a stack of coins being put down. SETH

I also want to clarify my previous post about the "single penny" bit. When I mentioned that Al Baker had used a "single penny" phase in his Stack of Quarters routine, I only wanted to note that the basic idea had been around for quite a while. I wasn't trying to minimize Bob White's contribution, if in fact that was his idea.

Although Baker's routine used a single penny rather than a stack of pennies, that penny was used in a different way (a penetration) than it would be used in the Whisper routine (a convincer). So if in fact Bob White created the specific single penny phase that's part of the Whisper routine, then he certainly should have been given credit for it -- in addition to some of the royalties.

It's not uncommon in many fields other than magic for good ideas to be subsequently modified and improved upon. But the "improvers" also need to get credit, if that's the case. SETH

Our dad had a lot of gaffs by Todd from the early days that weren't hallmarked. When Todd found out that dad
had engraving equipment he had approached dad about how to engrave his hallmark onto this coins. Dad recommeneded
a Pantagraph to engrave his hallmark. I'm not sure if that is the method Todd used, but it sort of looks that way.

From what I understand, "Whisper" is no longer available. Although Tango makes a Stack of Quarters gimmick, the reviews on Penguin Magic have not been good. And while Johnson Products made a nice pinned stack, they're now out of business.

I see that Airship makes Ramsay stacks. Have you ever considered making a Stack of Quarters gimmick? It's a shame to see this classic effect sidelined because of a lack of quality apparatus. SETH