by Kennedy

First of all let it be known that I'm not a magician, but a mentalist. So this method may be a little too bold for many, but it will certainly work.

The effect:
A spectator is chosen at random and asked to remove her finger ring. The is asked to hold the ring behing her back and guard it as "it will be very important very soon".

A deck of cards is introduced, shuffled and thrown in to the audience. Someone catches it (at least you hope they do otherwise we'll be seeing the wonderful magically appearing courtcase!) and is asked to go through the deck, take out a card and then return the rest of the deck to it's case before throwing it back to you. In return you throw out a pen and have him sign his card.

The gentleman is asked to join the wonder worker on stage, where his card is replaced in the deck and thoroughly shuffled, the deck is then replaced in it's case and given back to the gent, who is asked to stand on the other side of the stage.

Imagine the picture: On one side of the stage is a women holding her ring behind her back. On the other side a man holding a boxed deck of cards in which his card has been thoroughly shuffled by the performer and the man himself.

Now the performer claims he has set this up under test conditions, yet it is these conditions that allow him to make the impossible happen. BAM!

"Open the deck and see what happened to your card"

The man can not find his card in the deck, it has gone. The woman on the other side of the stage is asked to bring her hands round in front of her, where we find the signed card to be inside of the ring she's been holding this entire time!

Method:
This is very simply really. You have the woman take off her ring. You are standing side by side. You demonstrate that she is to hold the ring behind her back and not let anyone see it until you tell her. At this point you take the ring behind your back under the guise of demonstrating and load a playing card that is folding in to eighths into the middle of the ring.

You pass it to her behind your back making a joke that from down on it must be kept right out of the way...this will make for test conditions. When you hand it to her make a comment like "don't spoil the surprise just yet, keep tight hold". This will cover the fact that she will feel the card there.

Now you have the card selected in the fairest possible way, I like this idea of having it done in the audience as it amplifies the fairness of the conditions. You then have it signed, returned to the deck and perform a false shuffle, controlling the card to the top.

Now you are about to hand the deck to the gent who signed the card, but as you talk you are going to perform a mercury fold of the on the top of the deck. Turn the deck face up and perform the fold. Now you can easily conceal the quartered card in your
hand as you hand the deck to him for shuffling. You make a fuss about him putting it back in the box and moving them far away from each other. All to create time misdirection and drama.

Now you direct him to discover that his card is missing. You have the woman bring her ring from behind her back. There is a card in the middle of the ring. As she brings this in to view you have plenty of misdirection to give the quarter folded card another crease to make it in eighths.You take the card out at finger tips and switch for the folded selection in your hand, as you make your way to the man on the other side of the stage. You have plenty of time!

Now remember she is NOT in on this, she is NOT a stooge because you handed her this card before this guy even chose his, so this is dual reality. To the woman she doesn't know how you handed her the card BEFORE it was even selected. To the audience, they don't know how the card appeared in the ring that the woman was holding. You can back this all up with words like
"you didn't feel me do anything funny? You didn't feel me put an extra card in there did you?".