Chapswitch is an effect whereby a rolled up bill transposes with a chapstick.  In my pass reviews of Sandsminds’ product, they are always adding words like “gimmick included” or “no prepration” necessary in their product description.  For Chapswitch’s product description, they are pretty honest to say “*Gimmick material included” because you will need to prepare a gimmick with the material included.  You will have to take note that owners cannot perform this on TV and they will have to obtain permission from Sandsminds.

Preparation of the gimmick is pretty easy and you can set up a few different currencies so as to have more variations.  Each time you make a gimmick, you will be destroying a bill.  A bill will probably have enough to make about 3 gimmicks.  The gimmick material is very easy to find and there be no difficulties finding replacements.  You will also need to find a chapstick that is the same length as the height of your bill.

During performance, you are pretty much limited to your angles.  It will look good from the front but you will need to be careful of your sides.  This effect is not sleight free even though you have a gimmick to work with.  Without exposing the method, all I can say is you will need to hide the gimmick as well as ditch it after the change occurs.  But don’t let that small sleight stop you from considering this as they are pretty easy to execute.

Herman (the guy from Sandsminds) says this effect is very organic.  I don’t seem to see anything organic that relates to these 2 items.  I was not impressed by the performance segments of the DVD.  It seems that the performer is not well versed with this effect but the explanation part was very detailed.

So to buy or not to buy?  This is probably a tough one.  I don’t dislike this nor am I in love with it.  You can probably device a method using sleight to have the same effect though it will not give you that visual change using Chapswitch.  If you think you can find a suitable chapstick, I’d say go ahead as it is not awfully expensive.  However, Sandsminds has been releasing many single effects recently, I’d be happier if this effect is part of a multi effect DVD.

Rating : 7/10