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The Change Bag

A cloth bag on a handle that turns one thing into another, or produces what was never in it — the workhorse of children's and parlour magic.

Difficulty
Beginner
Performs
Parlor, Stage, Corporate
Type
Transformation

What they see

The effect from the front

The bag is turned inside out, shaken, and shown to be empty — properly empty, held up and turned over.

Something goes in. A silk, a coin, a slip of paper with a prediction. The bag is shaken, opened, and what comes out is something else entirely, or nothing at all.

It is the prop that makes an audience of children possible: selections can be forced from it, objects vanish into it, and it can be shown empty between every single phase without slowing anything down.

Provenance

Where it comes from

A nineteenth-century stage device, descended from the older sac à décharge used by French conjurers, and in continuous manufacture ever since.

It stayed because it solves an awkward problem cleanly. Vanishing a borrowed object in a close-up setting is hard; doing it at six feet in front of forty people is harder, and the change bag does it while being shown empty on both sides.

Learning it

What it takes

Among the most forgiving props in magic and a reasonable first purchase for anyone performing to a room rather than a table.

The operation is immediate. What takes thought is building a routine that justifies a bag being in your hand — the prop is so capable that the temptation is to use it for everything in the act, at which point it stops being a bag and starts being the method.

The flash bag is its louder cousin and is a fire effect; treat it as one.

What you need

Props for the The Change Bag

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