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Ok, just typed "Coin Magic Jean Hugard" into the search and got 31 pages... So I typed in "Jean Hugard" and got 20 matches. So Apologies if this has been reviewed before!
It's too late to go through 31 pages of titles...

Anyways!

Coin Magic by Jean Hugard

The Effect

An 88 page booklet on coin magic, by Jean Hugard, he of Royal Road To Card Magic fame!


Cost

£4.99 from www.dudethatscoolmagic.co.uk

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

Ranges. Starts from about 2 and goes all the way up to 5...

Review

Well, they say it's "A complete manual of coin conjuring..." and I say "It's a poor mans Bobo. But not that poor..."

First up, for 88 pages, maybe £4.99 is a little steep but it's a pretty good little booklet either way, and to be quite honest I wasn't that begrudged to pay a fiver to try and increase my coin repetoire.
There's loads of sleights in there, from palms to clips to holds etc including one which, if memory serves me correctly, isn't to be found in Bobo... Anyway. The sleights are somewhat awkwardly explained and if you didn't have the pictures you'd be crippled, but it's enough to get by.

The tricks range from "that's easy..." to "phew... that made my knuckles bleed!" which suits me fine. Gives me something to practice until I can actually do coin magic.
There's a few nice ones in ehre that aren't in Bobo, but some of them are which is another downside.

Now, on the upside, it's not quite as archaic as Bobo, being published in the 70s and not the 1910s or whenever Bobo was published which means that lots of what's going on is a lot easier to follow. Certainly I found the "coin from card" trick a lot easier to follow in this one than Bobo.

Overall

If, like me, your coin magic is somewhat limited at the moment, splash out on this. At £5 it's not exactly going to break the bank, and it is good once you get past all the awkward explanations etc.

If you're a seasoned coin magician, then give it a miss, although that could be said of most coin literature if you're already good.

Whilst it's certainly not the great source of refernce that Bobo is, here's one book I wont be putting down for a while.

And as mentioned, for a fiver you can't go wrong.

8/10

Recommended reading!

Nice little review Mr.Zero, i think i'll stick with Bobo then.

Coin Magic was first published in 1935, and Bobo in 1952 - so Hugard was first with the duplicate sleights.

My copy of the book is in two parts, and was published by Davenports while they were still in Oxford Street, and has 112 pages. Since the single volume seems to be 88 pages, it seems to be missing something (although I'm not sure what).

I'm not sure if it is better or worse than Bobo - it is of its time. Bobo tried to write the encyclopaedia of coin magic, as it was in the fifties. In Hugard's time card magic was much more prevalent, and the vast majority of his output was on cards. I like to think that he put out Coin Magic simply because such a work did not exist at the time, and it contained the limit of his knowledge.

At the price it would be good value, and certainly something worth looking at if you are interested in coin sleights.

Take care, Ian

Thanks for the additional info Ian!