I did a small trick using a himber wallet a while back and the person that I did it for asked to see the wallet. I could of course not show her it and just tried to avoid focus from the wallet and got out of the situation by just move along, but the spectator was still suspicious.
Next time I am thinking of just put the wallet directly out of sight and just pick out what I have in it to conclude the trick but I am curious how you get out similar situations?
So, when you guys and gals use a gimmicked deck or other unexaminable prop, how do you divert the spectators from being curious?
The sad thing about this question is that the answer is one that will leave you feeling that the one who answered cheated you from a proper answer (at least, that's how I feel when people answer questions in this manner!).
The answer:- It's probably how you handled the gimmick that gave you away. A possibility could be that the spectator is versed in magic themselves and wanted to check, or they have the knowledge of some trick involving a wallet and they wanted (again) to check. But 99% of the time, it's us magicians who dig our own graves in these cases. We just telegraph somehow, that a particular prop is important.
For example, have you ever thought that if you want me to sign a card, I'll probably pay close attention to what you do with that card after that, because well, why on Earth would a fellow human being want me to write my name on a piece of cardboard? (Refer: Maximum Entertainment by Ken Weber)
Or that if you usually are slow and deliberate, conversing casually throughout the effect and suddenly speed up even slightly when handling a certain prop, I might become suspicious?
Or if you have an unusual death grip on that prop?
Or if you suddenly start talking to me a lot and EXPLICITLY making it clear that you want to maintain eye contact with me during some part, thus also explicitly implying that you don't want me to look at your hands?
Or if you trusted me as a perfectly capable human being a few moments ago when shuffling your expensive cards, but now when I'm holding a face down card that is ''not'' mine, your hands are very close to mine and you seem to be scared that I might turn over the card I'm holding, I'll probably add up 2 and 2 and figure out that there's something up (a.k.a, it's not magic) ?
These are just few of the ways we telegraph to the audience that something is just not right with the thing we are using to achieve the magic. The scarier part is that some of these actions might be in-built in us. As in, maybe by default we speed up our talking when we're handling something gimmicked, or we blink when we're performing a sleight and so on and so forth.
The happy news is that if you rehearse enough (notice how I didn't say 'practice) then you can reduce them to a bare minimum or even who knows, just eliminate them altogether!