Dear Jerxy: The Multiple Bill Change

Dear Jerxy,

Did you ever do Hundy 500 or something similar? And if so, did you have a particular presentation you used? —SR

I don’t really use those bill changes to change $1s to $100s or something like that. At least not too often. I usually use that sort of technique in a trick like this, where I’m secretly switching some of the bills.

The trick of changing 1s to 100s doesn’t really need a presentation. In fact, an overblown presentation might detract from the trick because this is so clearly exactly what you’d do with magic powers. So any greater explanation probably weakens the effect.

I will tell you something I did once with Hundy 500 (or maybe Extreme Burn) ages ago.

I was watching The Food Network with my girlfriend at the time and they featured some little chili-dog stand in Pennsylvania on a show. It struck us as looking incredibly delicious. So we decided that the next day we’d take the 5-hour roundtrip and go get some chili dogs. Spontaneous road trips to satisfy one specific food craving are one of my favorite things in life.

On the way there I said I had to make two stops.

First, we stopped at a no-name gas station. I gave my girlfriend a $10 bill and asked her to go in and ask for a five and five ones. “I have change if you need some,” she told me.

“No,” I said, “I need the bills from this place.”

She was confused, but went in and got the money.

Next, we stopped at my friend’s place in New Jersey. “I’ll just be five minutes,” I said and rushed into the house.

A few minutes later I came out with a gallon jug of something that looked like pee.

“The fuck is that?” she asked.

“You’ll see later,” I told her and tossed the jug in the back seat.

The trip rolled on. We got our chili dogs, some tater tots, and some soft-serve ice cream. It was good as shit.

Then we headed back home.

At her place, I got out of the car and asked her for her help with something before we said goodbye.

I removed the five singles she had obtained for me from the gas station. I gave her one and asked her to take a look at it. “Looks normal, right?” I took it back and added it to the other bills in my hand.

I gave her the jug of yellow liquid and asked her to pour it over the bills in my hands.

She was wondering what the hell this was about, but if I wanted to get this pee liquid over my hands, she wasn’t going to stand in my way.

She poured the liquid over the bills, and as it glugged out of the bottle and splashed over the money, the bills visibly transformed from ones into 100s under this golden shower.

“Keep pouring,” I said, “they need to get fully saturated.”

After half the jug I said, “That’s probably enough.” I showed her the bills. All $100s. No ones to be seen.

“Thanks, babe,” I said. I shook the liquid off the bills. She stood there just blinking in confusion/awe. I asked her to cap the bottle. “I’ll save it. It might be good for another batch.”

That relationship was just a summer fling and we don’t really keep in touch much. But hopefully, she’s out there and occasionally thinks of that sunny road trip to the chili dog place, and how we had to get some one-dollar bills from a specific run-down gas station, and a jug of mysterious yellow liquid from a house in the middle of nowhere. And how that liquid just seemed to wash something away, causing the bills to change from 1s into $100s.

And how, the next night, after dinner at the nice sushi place, I gave her a wink and a “Shh” as I dropped two $100 bills on the table to take care of the check.