"Ultimate Coin Purse" by Rodger Lovins
Suggested Retail USD$39.95
Available from your favorite dealer
In a Blink: 6 Out of 10

Rodger Lovins' "Ultimate Coin Purse" is a neat little utility device with a lot of potential, but you won't find much in the package; this is very much a build-your-own effect device.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you. A good gimmick can handle that load very nicely, and Lovins' "Ultimate Coin Purse" is a good gimmick. But if you're expecting to buy this and start creating incredible miracles right out of the envelope, you're going to be disappointed.

The purse itself is pretty well made (it'll last a good long time, but you're likely to need to replace it after a while). It's a medium-sized leather purse with a spring closure (as opposed to the more familiar snap closures we're used to on spongeball purses) rigged as, well, a chop purse probably is the best way to describe it -- the ads use it, and it does fit.

As you can expect, the purse can be used as a chop cup due to the gaffing of the purse and, as such, it works pretty darn well ("Ultimate Coin Purse" comes with the small crocheted balls we pretty much expect from a chop cup so you don't have to go tracking down your olds ones that are probably under the bed). In addition, Lovins' makes use of a "built-in" feature of certain spring closure purses to make his "Ultimate Coin Purse" function as a pretty neat little "change purse" for switches.

All of that makes "Ultimate Coin Purse" a very practical, very neat apparatus to carry around (and it fits -- since the interior is not tinkered with much, carrying around coins in it is normal enough). Give it a little thought and you'll have some neat routines at your disposal.

This is not, by any means, a device for beginners. Lovins' instructions are brief, sometimes very brief, and the accompanying photos sparse and low in quality. This means that, going into it, you'll have to have some experience to really make the most of this and you can't really look the instructions for much help. Yes, there are five routines, but they are, at best, average (to lower the bar even more, you're going to be making jaunts to magic shops and hardware stores to pull some of the effects off... unless in your gaining experience you also picked up the gaffs).

The first effect you're exposed to is "Chop Purse", which is a chop cup routine which is okay, but requires a miniature chop cup that fits inside the purse. Next is "$100 Quarter Challenge", which has four quarters initialed by you and three spectators mixed in the purse, one withdrawn by a spectator (with it said whoever's coin is drawn will win $100), and it's yours. Naturally this is repeated with the same result. "Unbolted Nut" is what it sounds like: a nut and bolt are threaded together and dropped in the purse, shaken, and then dumped out unbolted. You'll need to break out your coin gaffs for "Scotch and Can of Soda" has an English penny and a half dollar transposing from underneath a can and the purse and from your hand to the under the can again. "Halves or Quarters" will send you back to getting the necessary coin gimmicks, but it does look pretty good: a stack of half dollars is held in the hand and a stack quarters put in the purse and, when the halves are tapped with the purse, change places.

None of the tricks, unfortunately, rise above the average (or, put simply, what you'd expect given the gimmick involved). This is a shame, really, because "Ultimate Coin Purse" really is a very slick piece of work. I really like the thing. It really deserves some neat effects to really show off what you can wring from it. But that's not the case.

Do I like "Ultimate Coin Purse"? Yes, I do. A lot. It's got some great things going for it which will all but guarantee this prop going out the door with me time and again. Do I recommend it? To those that have been around the block a few times, yep. Experience will really help you wring the most out of this thing.

Without that experience, you'll have precious few resources to turn to with the device itself and you'll likely find yourself frustrated.

All told, "Ultimate Coin Purse" is delightful and worth every penny if you have an idea of what you're doing with it going in.

"Ultimate Coin Purse" by Rodger Lovins
In a Blink: 6 Out of 10

Practicality: 10
This is wildly practical: a chop cup that packs flat, holds your coins for you (in a more masculine manner than a snap purse) while waiting to be used, and allows for some neat work to be done. Things like reset times and set-up and the like all depend on what you do with it, of course, but the prop itself? Great stuff.

Workmanship: 8
The workmanship is very nice, though as with most of this type of leatherwork you'll be replacing it after a while. It will be a good long while, though, and when the time comes you'll find replacing it cheap (to quote Marshall Brodein: "...once you know the secret")..

Documentation: 5
The documentation here is adequate but it could have been, should have been, much more. This is a great little tool and deserves more than brief write-ups and average effects.

Effect: 5
You can work some real miracles with this thing, but the supplied effects? Par.

Presentation: 5
Fitting the effects, the presentations are what you'd expect from your typical magic trick: average.


Shane