The Seven Keys theme was created by Joseph Kolar in 1927, see here for more details.
This has to be my favorite Anverdi effect! This is the version that has been cleverly updated by Tim Hill with a modern remote control unit. The changes include:
- The standard key box remote plus a small separate fob remote – either can be used.
- A ten second delay after activating either the key box or the fob remote – this means you can press the button and still use the key for up to ten seconds before it locks. This turns out to be a very useful feature
- It has been painted black – I’m not sure if this was done by Tim or not, but it looks good. You can see the difference in the final photo or the original here.
Anverdi’s Key Box has never looked so good and worked so well 🙂
It sill has all the features I love:
It looks like a nice looking petty cash box – in fact I load it up with cash so it IS a cash box. You’ll notice when you open the box there is the cash and a smaller box inside – this holds the 7 keys (and also turns on the unit when removed).
I show the cash and then take out the little box and rattle it ask the audience what do they think is inside – they invariably say coins. So I say no and tip out the keys and locate the one with the purple key fob (you could use a ribbon etc, but I like the idea of a fob as you could also have a prediction on there if you so desired). I give this to the spectator to lock the box – you never need touch it again after it is closed and locked by the spectator.
I then take off the key fob and shake up the keys so that no one knows which key opens the box. Then I tell the spectator they have 6 chances out of 7 to choose the correct key, and if they do they can keep all of the cash. This gets them interested for sure. Each time they chose a key and they try to open the box I ask them to discard the key in the little box so that we know we tried it. They can change their mind as many times as they want and they can try each key as many times as they want – there is no chance that the box will open. But when they finally leave you with one key, they can pick it up and amazingly the box opens.
This is so clean – nothing added or taken away and it just looks as clean as can be. A real miracle!
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