Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Envelope or Pocket Card

While U. F. Grant used two cards glued on three sides, forming an open envelope, to vanish or add a coin during a Coin Assembly (a marketed trick, I believe), and John Kennedy much later reinvented this idea in his marketed “Impossible Matrix”, 1978, Daniel Rhod mentions in Notes on the History of Cardsharping in France , 2011, p. 23, a description of “La Pochette” in an anonymous book, Les misters du phraraon dévoilés…, 1810. The pocket card was used to add a double Louis d'or secretly to a bet after it had proven successful.

J. N. Hofzinser used a pocket card for a different purpose: to receive a borrowed finger ring, after which the open end of the card was sealed with diachylon, and later the ring was produced from inside the card. See “The Insoluble Impromptu” in J. N. Hofzinser: Non Plus Ultra, Vol. II, by Magic Christian, 2013, p. 290.