Backpalming a Card

Called Backpalming or back palming, learning this magic trick is a must for any magician. Print this page, bookmark us, but you simply must spend some time and learn this magic trick! David Blaine, David Copperfield, Jeff McBride and countless other professional magicians do this. You can too!

Here's a sample video from Magic Trick Videos that shows the performance. You can purchase a video on that site (as well as plenty of other videos) that show you how to do magic tricks. They've been kind enough to let us use this video to show you what we're about to teach you!

You'll see that after the cards are produced, he does a quick backpalm to make the card disappear! Well worth learning all of it!

Effect:

You can throw cards up into the air and they magically disappear!

Secret:

Start with one card, and eventually you can move onto more. Hold the card between your thumb and index and middle fingers. Have the face of this card toward the audience.

Pretend to throw it up into the air. As you do this, make a fist. Let your fingers slip behind the card, so that now your thumb is pressing against your knuckles and is now holding the card.

Press the two long edges between the knuckles. Your first and middle fingers will hold onto the top long edge, and your little and ring finger will hold onto the bottom edge. Don't worry about bending the card bigtime here.

Release with your thumb and outstretch your fingers. Keep hold of the card. It should now disappear behind your hand. (This is an exposed view. When you do this, keep your fingers together, and slowly keep your hand in motion.)

It is okay if the corners show a little, just keep your hands moving up and down.

To grab a card out of the air, just reverse this process and you can do this several times in a row.

Here is what it should look like from the back (yes, you've got it backpalmed!):

Will Smith did this in the Men In Black music video.

You can also do this with business cards to impress clients.

Update: This trick has been posted to TrickMagic.com for several years now. Much to my surprise, I had a visitor email me that he actually got a job because of this very trick! In fact, his hiring manager/new boss was so impressed, he not only hired him on the spot, but he paraded the new guy around the office showing everyone this trick!

Like some of the other tricks at TrickMagic.com, there are a couple helpful videos on back palming and producing cards out of the air at MagicTrickVideos.com that you can pick up via instant download for a few dollars.