Tonight’s meeting was attended by 36 members and 21 guests. Themed ‘Coin Magic’, the event was held on 15 June 2025 at the Drama Centre at National Library building. The meeting was hosted by Kenneth Chia and assisted by Ivan Lee.
Secretary JK Tan announced a membership drive, and 3 of the guests signed up as associate members. This was followed by brief announcements concerning several forth-coming events.
Ian Tan opened his show with Shadow Coins, where 4 coins, each at a corner of a table mat, were magically moved, one by one, to a corner. He then moved each of the 4 coins back to their original corners. He conducted a teach-in, sharing tips on subtle hand movements to steal a coin and the clever use of shells for his smoothly executed coin routines.
San Wee, a highly regarded Malaysian magician from Malacca, performed a series of varied coin tricks followed by a teach-in, including transforming a lit paper into a coin, vanishing a coin, making it invisible, reappear, ‘jump’, enlarged to a Jumbo coin and producing multiple Jumbo coins from a single Jumbo coin. Placing a coin under a card at each corner of a table mat, he made them assemble at a corner and also vanished the coins. He did a similar routine without the cards. He also demonstrated how he could skilfully vanish 4 coins, one by one, and made them reappear from unexpected places such as his ear and beard. He shared tips regarding loading the shells and a range of techniques such as finger palm, classic palm, edge grip, JW grip, shuttle pass in his coin routines.
John Shutler performed a card prediction trick with a “good cop”, “bad cop” and “culprit” premise. One volunteer would ask random questions about the card which a 2nd volunteer (culprit) had picked and kept from public view. The culprit could reply with a lie if he chose to. A 3rd volunteer (good cop) would decide if the reply appeared True or False. Based on the question-answer session, John (bad cop) predicted the correct card, impressing all, as he produced an image of it rising above an earlier wrong prediction card, drawn on a page of his notebook. As per his request, the audience gave him helpful tips on his performance.
Edwin Seah placed a card, 9 of Spades, which a volunteer had randomly picked, beside the 3 face-down decks on the table. Using ‘data cleansing’ as a reason for deck alignment, he counted off 9 cards from each deck and when the top cards of all 3 decks were flipped over, they have now all transformed into 9 of Spades too. Edwin similarly requested and received constructive feedback on his performance.
During the break, we were all treated to packets of drinks.
Nique Tan kicked off the second half of the meeting. He executed a polished performance with his coin routines, and followed up with a teach-in. Presenting an invisible purse with just the purse frame, he magically retrieved 4 coins from it and made 3 of them penetrate the table one by one. Collecting the 3 coins under the table, he made them penetrate the table to rejoin the 4th coin in the invisible purse. He then transformed the invisible purse into a visible one and multiplied the coins produced. Filling the purse with the coins, he made the purse become invisible again, along with the coins! He placed an empty glass in his trouser pocket and appeared to throw 3 coins, one at a time. Retrieving the glass from his pocket, the audience could see that the 3 coins had landed neatly inside the glass. He transformed a small coin into a jumbo one, made it appear and vanish in different ways and closed his act by producing a Chinese jumbo coin from a piece of silk and then vanishing it.
Isaac Wong conducted an interesting lecture on how a toothbrush could brush 3 copper coins into silver ones and how, with a wave, the same toothbrush could revert the silver coins into copper ones. The secret lay in 2 silver shells, 2 copper coin and 1 copper/silver coin.
John Teo presented Sean Taylor’s “4 Eyes” trick where cards depicting open eyes and closed eyes magically transformed to eye of a needle, the letter I, the London Eye, and a pair of eye glasses. His next effect was “Hopping Halves” performed with an American dollar and a Chinese coin with a hole. Each time one of the coins was taken away, both coins would reappear inside his hand. The climax was when both coins vanished from his palm when it was least expected.
David Fillery shared his new idea of an ‘Undo’ button. He placed 3 coins in his hand and then removed 1 coin and put it in his pocket, leaving 2 coins in his hand. On pressing the ‘Undo’ button, the coin in the pocket returned, with the hand holding 3 coins, as if the coin had never been removed. By pressing the ‘Undo’ button twice, the 3 coins in the hand vanished, leaving the hand empty (ie. before placing the coins). He also shared tips for casual performances before families and friends, such as using local coins instead of foreign ones as it would be more natural, using the environment eg. steal or hide a coin via subtle body movements with aid of available cushion or table.
The lively evening of edutainment ended with 5 lucky draws and with souvenirs presented by President John Teo to the special performers: San Wee, Nique Tan and Isaac Wong.
Reported by
Low Hwee Lang (Ms)
