| picking up a card and using it to pick up the coin under it. I noticed that I picked up the |
| card by grasping it by the edges. I also noticed that sometimes the coin would lever up |
| with the card when I pressed on the middle of the card. Realize that I was still |
| practicing on my bed in my bedroom. The mattress is softer than most close-up pads |
| and therefore the coins react differently. I finally thought of the outlandish idea that I |
| could pick up the coin at the same time I picked up the card. This solved the |
| awkwardness of using the coin vanishes for the first two coins. Years passed however, |
| I felt that picking up the coin with the card was obvious and was afraid to rely on it |
| heavily. Therefore, my Cards-n-Coins routine, as I called it then, was to place the four |
| cards on top of the coins moving the first coin over. I would pick up one card to reveal |
| a coin and do a finger clip vanish with it and show a coin had arrived at the target spot |
| on the table. In the process, I would load the just vanished coin. Then I would do the |
| pick up move with next coin and show the second coin had arrived. The last coin |
| transposition already happened. This was my routine for many years. |
| The idea behind this handling was that the first vanish was standard and, therefore, |
| stable. The coin pickup was not so standard and not proven so I thought I would do it |
| quickly with the hope it would slide by the audience. |
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