Next Meeting: 15 March 2025 | Theme: Annual General Meeting | Location: NLB Drama Center

REVERSE WALLET by Dominique Duvivier

As the name suggests, this is a wallet that reverses itself: both the appearance of the wallet as well as the contents of the wallet.

You receive a wallet that has newsprint design both on the outside as well as in the inside. Instead of bank notes, this wallet contains sheets of newspaper prints. In an instant, this wallet transforms into a usual black colour leather looking wallet, complete with black sheets of papers inside it instead of the newspaper sheets.

This is the basic effect. You receive everything as mentioned above, plus an instructional DVD. The reverse wallet is well made, and has a “locking” device when it is in the black wallet side. The DVD is also well produced and you can choose to view it in either the French or English language. In the case of the English language, you will hear the voice of a lady translator. Both the wallet and DVD come with a nice black paper bag.

A variation of the basic effect is to show a newsprint wallet with loose newspaper sheets and transforms it into a black wallet with real money inside it. Different ways of transforming the wallet are also shown in the DVD.

Quoc Tien Tran offers 2 routines. “Countdown” is an interesting novel prediction effect. A newsprint wallet is shown to contain a prediction envelope. A deck of playing cards is shown to contain different letters of the alphabet on each of its back. A stack of cards is selected. The letters on the cards spell “Diamonds” (in French). Some of the letters can also be rearranged to read “Four” (in French). The prediction inside the envelope is shown to be the 4 of diamonds. Magically, the stack of selected cards change to be all 4 of diamonds. The wallet is now transformed into a black wallet but with numerous digits in white colour printed on it. The remaining cards are now shown to be all 4 of diamonds and their backs are now printed with numbers instead of with letters! A lot of transformation both on the faces and backs of the cards as well as of the wallet.

Quoc Tien Tran’s second routine, “Bingo”, is not so intriguing. But it shows how, with some creative thinking, the reverse wallet can be applied to many different effects. – 13 – If you like novelty effects, and do not mind gimmicked looking props, you will love the reverse wallet. (7/10 stars rating.)