When I was buying some props at a Walmart I came across the Nertz game that is put out by Bicycle. It’s got different colors of the rider back cards. These would be great for making color changing card tricks. The only downside is that these appear to only come in jumbo index.
and a funny little thing that I noticed is on the back it lists all the colors and which ones are new. It lists red as a new color?!
If you’re working on a color changing card effect, I think it’s worth it to pick up a pack of these!
My favorite deck of cards are the old Cincinnati, OH Bicycle Cards. They moved to Kentucky in 2009, so these cards having been made in almost 15 years! As I travel I visit junk shops and whenever I find these unopened or decks with the seals intact, I buy them.
Here’s my current hoard of them!
I don’t use these cards for shows, I use them as my person practice/fun decks.
Inspired by Vitaly Beckman’s An Evening of Wonders show, I’m trying to think of ways to eliminate playing cards from my show. Not taking the card tricks out, but trying to figure out other things to use and use them in a context that makes sense. One of the tricks that I do is essentially a card prediction done with jumbo cards and the premise of the bit is the choices that I make in life. I think the trick would work with postcards, and could keep the theme of making choices. With travel postcards from different countries, there is a lot of visual contrast between the cards.
These cards are 4X6 inches which is a little smaller than jumbo playing cards. I needed to commit and buy five sets of them to make the gimmick set of cards or the trick.
There are very few comedy stage magicians that are also into sleight of hand. We BS’d a Juan Tamariz move and packet card switches, which was a ton of fun!
If you ever get a chance to see him perform, go do it!
When I was a teenager I saw a magic lecture (Michael Close?) where they did a trick that left the audience with a little prop. I think it was an origami bunny from a dollar bill. The lecturer said that clients could see that the magician was actually working by how many people had the origami bunny.
The idea of having something visual that people walked around with after you performed for them has stuck with me. I’ve had versions of things over the years. Currently the end of my ambitious card has the face of the card peeled off and stuck to the person who drew on the card’s shirt.
Recently I was performing at a large event and afterwards the booker commented on how many people had my cards on their shirts. Having visual reminders for bookers that you’re there and working is smart! While not 100% necessary, it is helpful at large events where the booker may never see you.
As I’ve been showing magicians the trick I’ve been doing where I peel the face off of a signed card, one of the comments that I’m frequently getting is that it must be a lot of work making the cards.
Honestly it is work, but not that much work. I’m frequently in hotels or AirBnB’s and have plenty of downtime. I can make big batches of them while I watch movies on Netflix.
Also, it’s worth mentioning how lazy and cheap many magicians are. Soo many magicians are amazed that I spend about $5 per show in things that get used up, or that I have to roll up balls of yarn for my show. That little bit of effort is what sets people apart from the pack!
I don’t get it when magicians are annoyed when people in the audience want to show them a magic trick. If I was guessing it comes down to an ego thing. When I’m doing roving close up magic, I always let them show me their trick. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at what they show you…usually it’s just the 21 card trick.
Occasionally I get to see this two card change:
However sometimes you get to see an amazing trick, this is probably what I’d consider the greatest trick I’ve ever had someone in the audience show me!
Letting someone from the audience have their moment makes you a generous performer. Now there are times where it’s inappropriate to have them do a trick, but in 95% of times when they offer there’s really no reason for you not to let them show you the trick aside from you being worried that someone will steal your spotlight.
When I’m doing close up magic, one thing that I don’t do is have people sign cards. There’s frequently a strange hesitancy when you ask people, like they aren’t sure exactly what you want them to do. Instead I have people draw a picture on the card.
I say, “Draw a picture on the card, it can be anything…Bigfoot fighting a ninja, so it’d just be a picture of a bigfoot. I won’t judge you…till later. I don’t care what you draw, I’m not your mom…wouldn’t be the first rocket ship I’ve seen today.” That has 2-3 laughs but it also gives them a moment to think about what to draw and I disarm them about worrying about the drawing being bad. It also takes away the incentive for a teenage boy (or drunk adult) to draw a penis as I’ve already gotten the laugh from that.
The other thing this does is gives me a real moment in the show that’s happening now that I can comment on. I can talk about the picture and everyone knows this is real and not preplanned.
Play around with using alternatives to signatures you might like it.
One quote that soo many people like to say, which I dislike is
“A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.”
Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin
The reason I don’t like the quote is usually who says it. It’s a lazy way to say you don’t like someone’s routine. Not all people who do magic tricks pretend to have magical powers. The people who quote the above are usually the same people that dislike card tricks.
Here’s fun Houdin quote I came across the other day:
Of all the marvels produced by Sleight-of-hand, card tricks are, beyond question, the most amusing, and the most generally appreciated.
Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin
You can’t have one quote and not the other. They came from the same person. I think I’m going to try to popularize this quote whenever people show their dislike for card tricks!
I recently ended up with about two dozen decks of bicycle cards that are the old stock of Cincinnati made playing cards! I just started using one of the packs of cards as my “pocket deck” at the fair I’m performing at. This is the deck that’s always in my pocket when I’m around the fair, and if someone recognizes me as a magician, it’s the pack I’ll use to show them an impromptu card trick. It’s not the pack I use when I perform, for that I use the normal bikes that are currently available. I just throw away the deck after each show.
What’s great about these cards old stock cards is that they way they are cut, they faro really easily. Anyone starting out right now that was trying to learn to faro shuffle with the new stock cards is going to have a hell of a time!
There’s a lot of physical differences between the new stock and the old stock. One that just hit me is the finish is a little bit different. I wonder if you put an old stock into a deck of new stock cards if it would work as a slick card? Or if not a slick card, some other sort of subtle locator? Unfortunately I don’t have a normal deck with me right now, so I can’t try it out for a few days.
I’m not a “card snob”, however it’s amazing how much easier it is to use a good deck of cards for pretty much any sleight of hand.
