Palming is a technique common to coin and card magic. It refers to the practice of secretly concealing such items in the palm of a hand or occasionally between the fingers. If performed skillfully, the hand appears completely empty.
One of the most common and useful palms is the "top palm." Hold a deck of cards in your right hand and, while distracting your spectators with lighthearted conversation (or "patter" as it is commonly known among magicians) or misdirection, pry the top card from the deck by applying pressure to the card's top-right corner with your pinkie finger. The top card will bend upward to fit neatly into the natural curve of your palm. You can then return the deck to the spectator while retaining the the top card.
To switch an object is to secretly exchange one magical prop for another. This has obvious applications to all genres of magic but is particularly useful in card magic. One of the most common and useful card switches is called the "top change."
To perform a top change, gently slide the top card of the deck toward you about half an inch. Holding the card you wish to dispose of in your other hand in a very loose grip, place it on top of the deck while simultaneously extracting the top card that you jogged out a moment earlier. This is a brazen move, but if performed with speed and confidence when your spectator is momentarily distracted either with patter or misdirection, it is completely undetectable.
Ditching is the practice of disposing of unneeded props in such a manner that the audience cannot tell that the object has been put away. The most common means of accomplishing this is to use what is known as a "topit." A topit is a secret pocket sewn into a jacket that tucks into the performer's waistband. The magician can safely store coins, cards, wands, silk scarves and even small animals inside a topit.
Misdirection is the art of manipulating and directing an audience's attention in order to provide cover for more mechanical sleights such as the aforementioned ditch or top change.
Misdirection is considered one of the fundamental principles of sleight of hand because it allows the magician to perform other sleights undetected. If people were incapable of being misdirected, very little sleight-of-hand magic would exist.
One common method of misdirecting a spectator is to place a large amount of emphasis on an object that is actually irrelevant to the trick itself. For example, a common staple of close-up magic is the "bill tear and repair" trick, in which the magician pushes a pen through a $20 bill and then spontaneously repairs it. There are numerous ways to perform this effect, but many rely on a trick pen. By ignoring the pen and paying inordinate attention to the $20 bill, the magician encourages the audience to focus on the money to the exclusion of the pen. This makes it much easier for the magician to "switch" the trick pen for an identical ordinary pen once the bill has been magically repaired.