Gravity Drop

This is a sleight based on the coin roll or steeplechase which I showed to Andreis Suarez (the only other person I know who currently can do it), who showed it to Japanese magician Shoot Ogawa, who gave it this name. In the usual version of the coin roll, the coin (usually a fifty-cent piece) is moved, or rolled, knuckle to knuckle across the back of the performer's fingers in a loosely closed fist. My version, which I independently discovered, but which I later somewhere read was the original and accidental impetus for the coin roll proper, looks easier but is actually more difficult. In the gravity roll the fingers are spaced just the right distance apart so that they don't have to move; rather, the hand just tilts toward the floor and the coin literally rolls all the way to the little finger, which is placed higher up to catch it. The move takes considerable practice. I remember as a twelve year old practicing the coin roll with my hand over the edge of the Empire State Building--not a good idea. So why would anyone want to do something in a way that is more difficult but looks easier? Because this sleight, especially when combined with the original finger-moving coin roll, can be used as a feint or pass: the right hand tilts and the left hand, appearing to catch the coin, tilts downward at the wrist and moves away as the performer follows it. (The tilting touch was taught by Dutch magician Fred Kaps.) The coin can then be made to vanish by traditional crumbling or, what I like to do, slapped against left hip and produced at the right one. Apparently the original coin roll was pieced together by Alan Shaw (one of the two great classical coin magicians after T. Nelson Downs) after, during his show, a coin accidentally fell across his fingers. The gravity roll is a sort of accident on purpose. By the way, I showed this move to Dai Vernon in Waltham, Massachusetts at the Lion's Club in the early eighties. He was drinking a beer.