Rough, Smooth, And Juggling Coins

-making alterations to your coins, for better indoor outdoor handling.

Coin Magicians love silky smooth real silver coins, like Morgans or walking liberty halves.

I myself try and use only silver, and I use smooth coins too, but on the street I prefer roughed.

What are roughed coins?

Before I can talk about roughed coins, I must talk about smoothed coins. Smoothed coins are very very old coins that have been worn silky smooth over many years or have been sanded down with emery paper to simulate the age.

Coin Magicians love smoothed coins, because of the myriad of things it will do for handling and deception. There is a huge body of work on the subject, so I will keep this brief.

When held together in groups, the smoothed coins create an air finish, that holds the coins together in one unit, or they can glide apart smoothly without talking. In fact they do many many more things that help the Magician, but we are going to be talking about roughed coins.

To get peoples attention and hold them, you need color sound and movement. I want to be loud, I want my coins talking all the time, unless I don't, know what I mean?

Rough or newly minted coins talk a lot, like me. I'm constantly jingling coins together and tossing them to catch them clanging together. Dropping them on the ground or table loudly.

Which brings us to Handling. Newly minted coins have roughed edges called milling. This gives the operator better grip. Smoothed coins work better if they have been hand milled with a jewelers saw, which is tedious and time consuming, but worth it.

Roughed coins grip better than any of these because they are roughed on the faces as well as the edge and create hang-nails all over the coin.

Roughing is created by simply dropping or bouncing coins off the pavement over and over. This also creates more shine and a reflective glow. So not only are they talking, but they are putting out a bright silver flash. Which again is something you may not want when working with smoothed coins.

But I need color, sound, and movement, on the street.

Roughed coins can be made quiet with firm grips and firm palming. Most Coin Magicians use a very ginger light grip. This can be disastrous on the street with unpredictable weather conditions, like humidity, arid dry climate, extreme cold or hot, or wind, or grabby people.

A tight grip with roughed coins, eliminates all these problems.

Note: roughed coins can look less attractive, and talk more when using complex moves in an indoor close up setting. Smoothed coins may be better suited in a pristine environment. I've learned to use them indoors over the years, but you may want to shy away from this.

This brings us to coin juggling.

I use juggling, pavement bouncing, magic tricks, and stunts, in routines that loop over and over until I get small crowd

Roughed coins are ideal (in my opinion) for the juggling I do with them, because they do not have that air-finish and tend to separate easier and make noise.

Note: When dropping them on the ground for roughing, I tend to give them a horizontal spin off my index finger, allowing them to fall flat, or at a slight angle.

This does two things, it chews up the faces, and gives a controlled bounce that I can catch on its way up. If I need more rough on the edges, I give it a vertical spin off my index finger as I throw it down to bounce back up for the catch.

I use the horizontal spin to Hacky -Sack kick and catch, because it gives the bounce more control off my shoe.

I will be explaining this, and all the magic secrets to my coin juggling routine in a TUTORIAL VIDEO I made in studio for paid subscribers.

Here's a coin juggling routine I use to get peoples attention. This is the routine I will be teaching in the tutorial.

I hope this helps y'all

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Your Pal Jimmy.