There are some decent enough things on this set of 2 DVDs, but here is a problem I have with this set: it is one of those products that is very hard to rate because of what is an is not included. The sleights/moves that you learn are not necessarily advanced moves, but some of the techniques are. The major issue comes not necessarily in the form of teaching technique but rather, teaching the timing of using them.

Most of the sleights he walks through the explanation for, spending more time on some than on others. In my humble opinion, the ones he spent less time on are the ones he should have spent more time teaching subtleties and timing for, such as the ROV Pass(a.k.a. Retention of Vision/Retention Pass). He does give a great deal of background on other resources and references from which to learn these sleights, which I would highly recommend.

J.W. Grip - he teaches the basic J.W. Grip and 3 ways to use it: a production, a vanish and a color change, as well as a teleportation effect using the basic move with two hands.

Goshman/Tenkai Pinch: He teahes the Goshman and Tenkai methods for getting into the position, then he teaches a way to do a color change from this position.

R.O.V. For starters he says that he personally learned this vanish from the David Roth DVD, but what he teaches you is not the Roth method. There is nothing wrong with showing you something different, but he should have clarified for the beginners that his handling was not exactly the same as the Roth method. He teaches a couple of variations on the vanish as well as how to utilize it for a color change (in this case, the Nabil Change).

The Richard Himber Vanish and the Milt Kort Drop Vanish: He does not really teach the proper timing steps for the Himber vanish and every time he does the vanish so as to demonstrate it, you can see the key part of the move that you are not supposed to see.

The Milt Kort Drop Vanish is taught pretty well, but his teaching is a little different from the original description in 'Modern Coin Magic' by J.B. Bobo. He describes this as being "...similar to the Himber Vanish in part of the execution." I paraphrase but that is not quite an accurate statement - it is actually much closer to the classic French Drop variation by Gary Ouellet.

The screen titles for the French Drop and Spider Vanish appear before he finishes speaking, then the screen freezes and the titles come full screen. This just seems to be an unnoticed editing mistake - nothing major.
French Drop: He teaches the classic version of the vanish as well as the Gary Ouellet variation.
Spider Vanish: He teaches the move in a way quite identical to the Michael Gallo variation but he calls it the Marlo handling. He also encourages a hand washing after the fact - this is not necessary because in this case if it is done correctly and is akin to running when nobody is chasing you...while waving your arms wildly over your head and screaming for people to look at you.

Productions
Masking Load: I have no idea where he heard this name for the "L'Homme Masque Load" but he teaches the move well enough. The ad copy lists "L'Homme Masque" and the "Masking Load" as two separate things but in fact, they are not and again, I have no idea where the name "Masking Load" comes from - I have never heard of that name for this production.

**For the record, L'Homme Masque was not French; he was a Peruvian named Jose Antenor de Gago y Zavala and he lived from 1850 to around 1924. Primarily, he performed in France while wearing a mask, thus the stage name 'L'Homme Masque'.**

J.W. Grip Production: He covers the move but not in as much detail as he did for the J.W. Grip section at the beginning. His productions with this sleight are all utilized under waving the arm in a side-to-side direction, which is fine, but I wish he would have taught the variation that leaves the hand still and in frame - it is very pretty and in my opinion, even more effective than waving your arm all over the place.

The Coin Roll was taught well enough and he could have taught a few nuances to make it look better, but his instruction is good and he teaches you how to do it well.

The 4 Coin Roll Down was not extremely well taught but sufficiently enough I think for the viewer to understand the mechanics. This is a very difficult flourish to teach because it is such a knacky one to get down. Also, some people may have trouble with this due to the way their hands move and work and combined with dry skin, it can be even more difficult.

Minor nitpick: At one point he calls the "4 Coin Roll Down" and the "Coin Roll" (a.k.a. the Steeplechase) "sleights". These are not sleights - they are flourishes.

The ad copy says that you will learn the Michael Ammar 'Sonic Squeeze' - not so. It is not taught on this DVD set anywhere but there is one section of his 3 Coin Production and Vanish that is similar-ish to the 'Sonic Squeeze'. He only mentions 'Sonic Squeeze' and its basic working in passing - he does not teach it.

His "teaching" of finger palm and classic palm placements were not thorough - he shows you where he places them in his hand and that is about it. At one point he shows what he calls a "lower finger palm" which was not what it was, just a finger palm with two different fingers. Just to clarify: By definition, traditionally, a "Lower/Low Finger Palm" is when a coin is held in Finger Palm at the base joint of the fingers. "Higher/High Finger Palm" is held in the middle joints.

The studio demos and teaching are all done with one camera shot, one-on-one, with him sitting in a chair and talking to the camera. Usually this does not work so well in magic instruction videos but here, it was not so horrible. There was a cat stalking about in the background and occasionally you catch a glimpse of its tail and/or back at the bottom of the screen, and a few times you even hear the cat.

The first disc is about an hour long and includes all of the "basic sleights" used in the effects he teaches and one three-coin production and vanish sequence. The video ends abruptly and returns to the menu at the end.

The three-coin production sequence in my opinion was nicely put together but his execution and timing was horrible. Any coin worker will tell you with certain production sleights, you should limit the amount of times you use it in one routine, let alone doing the same exact thing three times. He does a certain 'convincer' with his glasses and it is a great convincer, but it just does not flow when you do this particular convincer three times in a row before producing a coin, in the same exact position every single time.

An observation of a running error: Many times over he does something that every great coin magic teacher in the past 50 years has said NOT to do and with good reason - it SCREAMS 'something fishy'. That is to say, putting a vanished coin straight into CP without a delay between the vanish itself and putting the coin into CP. You can see him do it from a mile away because he suffers from the 'floating thumb' disease. Coin workers will know what I am talking about.

Another issue with timing that also "breaks" another "rule" in general - he recommends doing a hand washing sequence after a certain vanish, which is doing nothing more than running when nobody is chasing you.

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2nd Disc: There were a few annoyances with this right off the bat: First, a phone goes off in the background. Really, now? In general there was quite a bit of background noise which, while it did not overpower Mr. Kim, it was very annoying because it was loud enough to be heard continuously crinkling bags, cell phones, the cat, footsteps, doors, etc.

Copper/Silver: The effect is a classic and while he has done nothing radical with it, he does have some great routining in this one, particularly with getting into his J.W. Change, which is also a very pretty change. The first change at the beginning puts fingers into odd positions at that point, but you can cover it up with misdirection. Personally I would do the first change with different techniques and keep the J.W. Change.

His handling of the Nabil Change needs work - you can see him doing the move before his fingers are screened - I said the same before about his Himber Vanish.

The 'Coin Assembly on the Arm' thing was basically a non-effect when he performed it because the camera could not see anything. The two participants were in the wrong position - it should have been shot from overhead and during the studio performance, he performs side-on to the camera, and you can see him flashing. Big time. At one point during his closing thoughts on the effect, the camera has his face out of frame for a bit of the time, so you only see his mouth moving. Supposing that you routine this yourself and use the

His "bonus effect" was his take on the Al Schneider 'Matrix' and it was beautiful, well-routined and...then it collapsed like a hydrogen-filled balloon running into a match during the last phase. He hand was left in a very obvious and funny looking position, after which all four coins appeared in that hand.

During the explanation for this one, he started with four regular playing cards, switched to four clear cards for a part of the explanation, then went back to the four solid (opaque) ones, back to a single clear card, then the solid one is replaced, and yet again, the same card is switched again for the clear card to show 'one' move and then he puts the soid card back again and finishes with the clear card to show the final move. Did you follow all of that? Now he runs through the entire explanation at spead using four clear cards. Why not just use four clear cards to begin with - it would have saved five minutes.

He says that the steal is the hardest part of this particular effect and I would agree, but he also says it is difficult to do. Mechanically it is not, but to do the steal fluidly without pausing even for a second will take lots of practice. The mechanics are actually quite identical to the original Schneider steal. Find a way to rest your hand after you practice this steal because the ending is worth it - very surprising to a layperson watching if you do it correctly and cleanly.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why they made this a two DVD project - it could very, very, very easily all fit on to one disc with plenty of room to spare. The second disc, while barely 52 minutes long, was a waste of space with only three effects on it and some vague text crediting at the end. Make no mistake about the crediting - Maurice did a very good job throughout both discs because he named sources and resources as he talked you through the explanations of sleights and effects.

The ad copy is fishy because it claims that you will learn “25+ sleights” on this DVD. If you count the variations on some of them, that would be true. However, you learn LESS than 20 if you do not count a variation. I do not believe a variation counts as a sleight when it is based on the same core sleight. Add to that not teaching the Ammar sleight/effect, the issue with the “Masking Load” and the “Retention Pass/Retention Vanish” issue (they are the same thing, but they make it seem like they are two different sleights). If you count the bullet points there are “27 moves/sleights” but half of them are the same sleight used in a different way – it seems they put this list together to bulk up the number of sleights that are supposedly taught.

The menu on both discs was laid out cleanly and was easy to navigate. The sound was good on both discs except for a few seconds here and there where the audio faded to low, the video was good, but the camera work at times was shoddy. $40/USD, 2 discs and a total of 1 hour and 52 minutes of footage. I think the price is just a tad bit too high for what the product claims to be and it certainly could have all fit onto one disc for a lower price.

While I always recommend books first, if you would rather learn from DVDs I think there are better ones out there to start with rather than this one. The David Roth Expert Coin Magic Made Easy set is a very good, very thorough set and everything is expertly taught. Eric Jones also put out his Metal trio, which is also very good.

Once you have learned the basic and standard techniques and learned to do them properly, THEN you can move onto the stuff in this set. Again, the sleights and moves on this set are not technically advanced but again, in my humble opinion, they are not taught well enough (overall) for the beginner to develop good habits in executing them.

At the risk of repeating myself here, I will say that you do not need a working knowledge of the items taught on this set in order to learn them as they are explained. What you SHOULD have is a working knowledge of basic coin sleights and moves from a better source such as David Roth, Eric Jones, Michael Rubinstein, etc.

With all the ad copy issues and all things considered, I wish I could go a bit higher in the rating because this set does contain some useable material and decent enough instruction for those with a bit more coin working experience and practice behind them. For this, I have to go right up the middle:

2.5 stars.

Suggestions

If you really want a great start on the basics of coin work and beyond, I would suggest starting with 'Expert Coin Magic' by J.B. Bobo and/or 'Expert Coin Magic' by David Roth.

If you must have a DVD to begin with, I would suggest the David Roth 'Expert Coin Magic Made Easy' series, also by David Roth. It is essentially a companion to his book. Here you will receive expert tuition from a man considered among the best of the best in coin magic. It covers the range from absolute beginner to advanced sleights and routines and effects.