MagicShow.Tips – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Nick Trost’s 7 Card Count: Rollins-Hamman-Longe Routine

Nick Trost was a BEAST! He was a pioneer of modern card magic. I’m rereading The Card Magic of Nick Trost. One of the things that I’m doing is learning the original routine and then trying to update or add something to each routine. I’m only four tricks into the book, which has 122 effects!!!

The second trick in the book is the 7 Card Count and after Nick’s original routine there’s a Rollins-Hamman-Longe variation of it. The first trick is good, but this version is better!

I did come up with a variation on the original, but also a variation on the variation! If you have the book, it’s the exact same set up and routine, except these are the card, and the final display is slightly different.

The card second to the left has a picture of a stop sign, but it could just be a blank card that says “stop”.

What this setup does is change it so each card that’s eliminated reappears in the packet. Also, I like the 1-2-3 of each color to sell the premise of only using three cards of each color.

Right before the final display, you’ll have three face up black cards, and you’d normally put them on the bottom, in this case put them face down on top. Next, pull the three red cards one at a time off the bottom and deal them face up on the table. Then deal the top three cards (black) face up onto the table, and that will leave you with the final (stop) card face down in your hand. Say, “This never works, we might as well stop now” and then reveal the final card!

The only downside is this trick is no longer impromptu.

The Stop Trick

I have a bunch of cards from a FA-KO deck, but I don’t have the booklet. One of the cards has a picture of a stop sign on it, and I started playing with it and this is what I came up with:

It’s pretty basic; the first is a second deal, and the second is the drop force.

I’m just “meh” at a second deal; if there’s no heat, it’s fine. One thing I noticed that’s a tell with most magicians that they’re not dealing the top card is when the hand holding the deck swings back and forth. I think that movement is magician’s thinking: “the big motion hides the smaller motion,” and I guess it does, but it doesn’t look right. I’ve noticed that when I try to keep my hand holding the deck static, my second deal flies by more magicians than when it moves.

I guess that’s a tip for the second deal?

-Louie

The Ice Cream Cup!

One of the tricks that I’m working on for a tour in April needs an opaque, tall, tulip-style ice cream cup. I spent hours searching thrift stores online and didn’t quite find anything I liked…well I did, but I also didn’t want to buy 36 of them!
I finally gave up on trying to find one that already exists and decided to design my own. The nice thing about this is that I get something that is what I want, instead of the potential limitations of gimmicking something that is already made.

Here’s what the trick looks like in my garage:

The ice cream scoop is something that Dan Harlan sells called The Scoop and he even posted this on his social media:

The cup is my design, and here’s what is it:

Obviously, you don’t need to use The Scoop with it; it would work great with a loop ball or just sleight of hand with a ball. Anything you can fake put into it would turn to the streamers.

Ok, so why did I make a full glass, when I don’t show it empty at the start and could just put confetti in it?

Simple, clean up.

There’s no cleanup with streamers; no one needs to sweep or vacuum them up.

For me, this is the perfect solution for the second half of turning ice cream into something exciting!

-Louie
PS: If you want one of these, contact me for pricing!

Floating Rock

One trick I learned as a teenager from Al Schneider was the Zombie Floating Ball. It’s also trick that I’ve never really done as more than a one off sort of trick. In the school assembly tour I’m doing in April I need to make a rock float, so the zombie method is what makes the most sense.

My gimmick is based on the Tommy Wonder style gimmick from his books, but modified to something that I could make and it’s detachable from the sponge rock.

I’ve also never really had any levitation’s in my show, so I’m excited to learn the ins and outs of performing one!

-Louie
PS Tommy Wonder’s brother has posted the VHS that came with Tommy’s Zombie on youtube: https://youtu.be/MRTY4jjtH1o?si=gkcGjQaMjRLXAuUK

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Hillia Hula

On this episode we welcome in the queen of rings Hillia Hula. We dive deep into all things hula. Hillia explains the different types of hula hooping, which ones she specializes in, tricks she is working on and she provides tips on how to make your own.

We learn about how hula hooping captivated her imagination and how she became obsessed with it. We also discuss her journey to becoming a professional entertainer and how she studied street performing for college credit. A great interview with a fantastic person and performer.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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More Snake Basket Progress

I’ve got the current version of the snake basket and aside from some potential minor changes, this will be the final version (for now). For context, here’s the first version:

And here’s the new version:

You’ll notice a couple of changes from the original version. The first version was a card trick, and this isn’t. The original ending, with the snake jumping out with the card in its mouth, always felt anticlimactic to me. The ending is the snake jumping out; the card was a lower point than the surprise of the snake jumping out. Using the snake jumping out as the end to close the routine makes more sense to me.

With this no longer a card trick, I could get rid of the card fountain. That’s good, because when the cards shoot out, they need to be picked up. With confetti, it’s just swept up after the show.

I also like that the ending plays bigger than with a card. A card is hard to see clearly what it is from a distance, this will play much further back!

-Louie

Society of American Magicians – By-Laws

This booklet from the Society of American Magicians from 1957 has some interesting stuff inside it.

One of the interesting things was their rules for magic books:

Section C above means all those Ed Harris Jumbo Dollars that teach magic tricks on the back are violations of this section. It also makes giving away any promo that teaches a trick a violation. I don’t know if this is still in their current by-laws, but it highlights how tightly held magic secrets were at one point, compared to now.

-Louie

How Do I Do This?

Here’s a card revelation I found on a hard drive from a January 2024. I’m not sure how I did it.

Here’s what it looks like:

I guess I posted about it here:
https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/card-production/

It’s kinda cool, I wonder why I stopped playing with it?

-Louie

The Speed Bump That is 6/7

I’m still working on the show I’m doing for a school assembly tour in April. One of the tricks that I had planned is a cards across type effect using postcards. I had a method worked out, then I realized the trick involves counting to ten.

Counting to ten means I’ll have to deal with kids and the 6/7 trend that’s still happening. It’s not as crazy as it was a year ago, but it’s still a thing.

In the past, I’ve used the Piano Card Trick‘s method of pairs to do an object across types of trick. That version has no counting, just moving pairs of cards. That eliminates using the numbers six and seven in sequence.

The downside of using the pair method is that only one thing moves instead of two or three cards. I guess the big plus is that since I’ve used this in shows before, I have a lot of the “bits” built in, so I don’t need to do a lot of figuring out gags. That’s also a bad trap; I shouldn’t be lazy and should be writing new gags.

-Louie
PS If you’re interested in using the piano card trick onstage, look into Jim Steinmeyer’s Apples and Oranges trick.

Do The Work…

I’m going to be a grumpy old magician today. I get super annoyed when I see posts like this:

The poster bought a trick, which is the easy part, but doesn’t want to do the hard work. People who ask for routines never say what work they’ve done (I’m assuming they haven’t done any). This is why many people don’t think of magic as an art, because magicians constantly demonstrate that they aren’t artists.

Here’s what that person should do to work on a routine for mental dice:

1: Examine the prop:
-What is it…duh it’s a die
-What can it be hidden it to make it look like something different

2: What can the prop do:
-Let’s you know which side of a cube is uppermost
-Since opposites sides of a die add up to 7, it also tells you the lowermost side. This could be applied to any decorated cube, you’ll just have to memorize pairs.
-Can be used as a random selection device (free choice)

With those two things above accomplished, you should have a little bit of a start.

Let’s say you put the die into an alphabet block that has a different letter on each side. That essentially is a die, but instead of numbers, you have letters. Also, each letter is colored, so now you have a choice of letters or colors. That gives you 12 things you can get information about instead of six.

A three-phase routine with the colored alphabet block could look like:
Phase 1: You reveal the uppermost color selected by someone
Phase 2: You reveal the uppermost letter selected by someone
Phase 3: Someone randomly rolls/shakes the block under a cup. They then selected a color from a stack of color swatches and a letter from alphabet cards. Those reveal the lowermost side of the block.

A little bit of work and you can have something unique. Not sure I’d call what I just thought of above as “art,” but it’s a step in that direction.

-Louie