KEY POINTS:
• No stooges -- including tipped-off restaurant employees
• You can only handle the cookie while it is still inside the plastic wrapper.
SET UP: a restaurant where you are served fortune cookies at the end of the meal. A borrowed coin – a dime or penny preferred.
PRESENTATION: Have a coin borrowed, marked or signed and vanish it in your favorite way. When asked “Where did it go?” reply – “I never know….”
After dinner the fortune cookies come – have your spectator select one and have them open the wrapper. “Hold it up to your ear and shake it, do you hear anything?” When they say no, look confused and take it in your hand and shake it by your ear (at this point, have the coin palmed in your hand.)
“I can totally hear something.”
Wrap the cookie and coin together in a napkin and give the entire package to your spectator.
“Just give the whole thing a whack with your fist and open the napkin.” They hit the cookie, open the napkin and they will see the coin and the broken shell of cookie.
NOTES: Of course, you could forgo the whole “napkin” charade, by just taking the cookie back into your hand with the palmed coin, shaking it in your fist making the rattling sound of cookie against coin - telling them to hold out their hand and then crumble the cookie into theirs (along with the coin).
But I like the idea of giving it back to them to do.
Enjoy