Tag: picking off the pips

Starting To Reopen…

card magic session

With my state finally starting to reopen, I got to do my first in person magic session with a friend of mine! He sent me a text to hop on Skype and I suggested we go to a brewery. Jamming in person is much more fun and productive that over the internet.

The one drawback of meeting up in person is that you don’t have your whole house of supplies to pull from if an idea comes up. For example, let’s say one of us came up with an idea that needed glue, we can talk about the idea, but we can’t try the idea. Over Skype you have more options for things like that.

torn card magic trick

The BIG advantage of doing a magic jam in person is that you can try things out on people around you. We did some magic for people at tables next to ours. It was from a distance of at least 6 feet, but it worked! People were really into it and I learned a few things I thought were great were just OK.

Making a Trick Happen…

About six months ago I had an idea for a trick, essentially it was a signed card changed from a five of spade to a four of spade. You can read my idea for method for this trick here. This is basically the trick “Picking Off The Pips” that I think I read a version of in the Amateur Magician’s Handbook by Henry Hay when I was a kid. The difference is that it’s a signed card.

I was going to make up a card, but time wise never did. Then due to the cancellations of shows due to COVID-19 I was cleaning up my office and found a set of Dry Transfer Decal Card Pips.

picking off the pip

This was probably the greatest thing that’s come out of cleaning out the office! Thanks to these I was able to easily make the gimmick for my idea.

The pip I added to the card was a bit smaller than the pips currently on a poker size deck, but I don’t think that will change how the trick works.

The trick hinges on people not being as familiar with a deck of cards as magicians are. I remember as a kid my mom coming home from work and they had a corporate trainer do a thing with a deck of cards. It wasn’t a card trick, but at the end the trainer asked if anyone had noticed anything strange with the cards. My mom was the only one who noticed that the red cards were black and the black card were red. The only reason she caught that is at that time she’d probably picked a hundred cards a week for me while I was practicing tricks. Normal audiences won’t notice.

I’m glad to have the gimmick, unfortunately I there are no audiences to do the trick for right now. I wish I could try it out.