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I was in the mall last night and there was a magician standing in the center of the mall doing some random magic. He wasn't paid by the mall or anything; he was just a hobbyist (I found this out later). I was standing about twenty feet away watching him do some random slight of hand stuff. I noticed he was wearing jean shorts, a t-shirt, and a baseball cap. I sat down on a bench and watched with friends. I got up to go to a store, and walked towards the store. He hollered to me (he identified me by my clothing), and I turned around. He took off his hat and held the bill of it with his right hand while he slammed his left hand on the bottom, throwing a wallet out of the hat. I walked over and the wallet was mine! He told me he didn't reach into the hat because he didn't want me to think he was palming it (I guess he thought that was the obvious solution). The weird thing is nobody ever got close to me, and my friends who had kept an eye on him said nobody ever got closer than 5 feet from him. Pretty wicked, I thought.

It reminded me of a magician I saw once who was a stage magician. Everyone sat down and watched his show. About halfway through the show he started calling out people's names and asking them to stand up (they had been sitting the entire time). He then produced a credit card of theirs out of thin air!

Anyone have any ideas how my wallet might have gotten into this guys hat or how the dude got those people's credit cards?

JAlexBrown

be afraid of the mall magicians, they have filthy pickpocketting friends!

I was quite petrified when I saw he had my wallet. I went up and talked to him when I got my wallet back. He was a nice guy, but absolutely refused to tell me his method for getting my wallet. My friends and I can both swear nobody was less than 5 feet from us or the magician, so nobody got close enough to pickpocket me and nobody got close enough to hand the wallet off to the magician.

JAlexBrown

It would be interesting to see CCTV footage taken while he was working and your wallet was, er, acquired.

I should also note that the whole time any one of us saw him his hat was on. I also have no idea when my wallet went into his hat since he never took it off.

I agree. CCTV would be interesting. Has anybody here every seen anyone do a trick like this with distance (nobody ever gets close to the person being pickpocketed, and nobody gets close to the magician)?

My friends who were with me last night just told me they got to be spectators in one of his tricks after I left. He had one of them sign a dollar bill, which he then made disappear. Easy enough, I suppose. Then they went into KB Toys and had the other one pick any stuffed toy on the shelf. The magician took the stuffed toy (my friend chose a stuffed dinosaur), and cut it from one end to the other (promising the toy store the entire time that he'd pay for it, lol; they looked at him mighty strange, they said). He then gave it to the friend who'd picked it and told him to feel around inside it. After pulling out lots of stuffing, he finally found a bill signed by my friend. A third friend (we were in a group of four before I left) wasn't involved in the trick, but he did take mini movies of each step of the trick, so I've seen proof of this trick. It is amazing to watch. I may try and find a way to get the videos onto the internet if I can.

JAlexBrown

classic case of repression me thinks.

you repress certain memories/part of memories, and it seems different to what the reality is - a very common psychological twist when it comes to studying memory.

basically, you will have had somebody near you, to pick pocket you - how else would it have been possible?

however, for something to pass into your short term memory store, it has to be encoded. and for this to happen, according to Atkinson and Shriffer (I believe it was these two psychologists) and their model of memory, you have to concentrate on the sense involved before it gets encoded into your memory stores - be it short term or long term.

Now, due to you nit paying attention to every single person around you, you would not have encoded the memory into your sensory memory store, and would not have transferred it into your long term memory - affectively being forgotten, or not even encoded to begin with.

In simpler terms, magicians use this "technique" all the time - misdirection. Due to the fcat that they do not pay attention to something when a sleight is being executed, for example the top change, it shall not pass into your sensory memory, and therefore doesn't get transferred along.

Now, the reason for explaining this in this much detail, if you could be bothered to read it, is simple. The fact is, you were pick-pocketed - you just didn't feel it, and therefore the memory didnt pass through your senses into your memory store

So, that's how it was done

A very well documented answer to how that part of the effect was achieved. How about someone getting close to the magician? If your eyes are on the magician the entire time, you would be hard pressed to miss someone getting close to the magician to hand off the wallet to them. And then there's the part about it popping up inside the hat. How are these two parts of the effect possible?

JAlexBrown

Did the magician have anyone from the audience help him on any of his effects?

By the way - you yourself said you left to go to a store - then TURNED AROUND to answer him.....

I don't believe any of my friends were in on the act, and they both tell me he never took his hat off and nobody ever got any closer than about five feet.

JAlexBrown

Be afraid of your own memory of events. Be even more afraid of your friends' memories. You are remembering incorrectly, I guarantee it. Otherwise the magician has real super powers. You were either pick-pocketed or you were the victim of a man who can make your wallet dematerialise from your person and rematerialise in his hat. Which is it?

Police agencies know that eye witness statements of events are notoriously inaccurate. People are basically c*** (not the best) at remembering things.

My friend suggested that the person who pickpocketed me without my knowledge may have walked BEHIND him and slipped my wallet into his back pocket. A little misdirection and my wallet is in his palm. Perhaps some sort of trick hat (maybe something in the top) where instead of smacking the wallet out of the hat he palmed it and threw it THROUGH the hat? Anyone seen a hat like that or think it would be possible to make one?

JAlexBrown

ooh. thats my next project. That would be really clever

I think you're over analysing the event. Why couldn't his accomplice have simply handed him the wallet and the magician put it under his own hat? Were you really watching him so intensely that this couldn't be possible? After all you had no idea this was what the magician was doing until after the event. And we know how bad our memories are at remembering events. The simplest solution is correct in 90% of cases.

I'm not discarding that as a possibility, but a magician taking off his hat would be hard to misdirect someone totally away from. If you know of any magician so talented with misdirection that they could totally hide taking off their hat and slipping something in it, then I'd like to meet that person.

JAlexBrown