An early description, perhaps the first in print, of concealing a coin in edge grip – held parallel to the fingers, between the thumb and length of the fingers – appears in Dariel Fitzkee's The Strange Inventions of Doctor Ervin, 1937, p. 24. Fitzkee wrote that it “has not heretofore appeared in print to my knowledge. It might be new…” In Fitzkee's description, the concealed coins are held with one edge pressed against the thumb, and the opposite edge pressed against the first and second fingers, possibly clipped narrowly between them (Fitzkee's description and illustrations aren't clear on this point). Another coin is held openly at the tips of the thumb and first two fingers, to make the position of the concealing fingers look natural.

This concealment doesn't seem to have inspired much interest until the early 1970s, when David Roth began to fool magicians with it in such routines as his version of John Ramsay's “Hanging Coins”; see Apocalypse, Vol. 1 No. 6, June 1978, p. 68. The grip Roth popularized moved the one edge of the coin or coins from the first and second fingers to the surface of the second finger alone.