How To Steal A Watch Off A Wrist

Steal a watch off a wrist? Why, what sort of publication would bring light to bear on such a sordid thing? The Wall Street Journal, naturally! It’s quite simple, really — 4 simple steps, laid out for you in great detail and with helpful illustrations” in Stealing a Watch, Made Easy, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2012. Actually an excerpt from the new book “Fooling Houdini” by Alex Stone, Copyright © 2012 (looks like a great book, btw).

As with any magic trick, though, the mechanics are only a small part of the illusion; psychology is the secret sauce. Practice, practice!

How To Steal A Watch Off A Wrist

Illustrations: Jason Lee

Step 1

You make a C with your hand and press your thumb against the watch’s face while your middle finger curls around the person’s wrist. The tip of the middle finger should align with the tip of the tongue.

Most watches have a little loop to hold the tongue down, so first you need to free the tongue by curling your middle finger inward, easing the tongue back out of the loop.

Step 2

Once this is done, your finger goes underneath the tongue and bends it all the way back, until the prong comes out of the hole.

Step 3

You then flick it back down and push the tongue slightly askew so that the prong doesn’t slip back into one of the holes as you yank the watch off the wrist.

Step 4

Finally, in a quick, fluid motion, you pull your hand away while palming the watch in your curled fingers.

goju1

Ok, so a few years ago I was in Munich at Xmas time and my mother in law warned me that there were lots of pickpockets about. I had seen magic ‘tricks’ quite a few times where an ‘illusionist’ removes a watch from someone’s wrist, without the victim noticing.
I was somewhat concerned about the notion that my watch could be removed from my wrist without me noticing so thought the best thing to do would be to surf the net and discover more about this, so that I could determine what best action to take to be on my guard.
In the video clips that I watched, the felon greets the victim in a very friendly manner, whilst shaking their watch hand (the left, which is of course unusual) and chatting away whilst following the procedure that you have posted.
A little while later, I decided that I should warn my sone about this and so for the first time ever, I attempt Ed the procedure. Now, he was forewarned, so the purpose was not to ‘steal’ his watch but rather to demonstrate the method
Kristian Haagen

What´s next? An article on “How to go to a watch fair, take pictures of all the news and produce a millions fakes of the depicted news”? Anyhoo, great entry. As always.
http://www.brilliantwallart.co.uk/ wall art

How do you operate the watch is another important aspect of the wrist watch that you need to consider when you are choosing a watch. There are watches that are battery operated and there are those which require the owner to wind them up before they can function properly and there are also those which operate on solar energy.