Tricks – Page 37 – MagicShow.Tips

Twenty Dollar Bill Switch

Many years ago I made a gimmick that can visually turn a one dollar bill into a twenty dollar bill. I use this all the time promotional videos for events and in virtual shows. A while ago when I was on the road, I tried to come up with a lot of different presentations for TikTok with the one gimmick.

Here’s what I came up with:

@louiefoxx Always Tip The Hotel Staff! #tipping #hoteltips #hotel #tips #magic #magician #louiefoxx #moneymagic #twentydollars ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

@louiefoxx How to make money! #howtomakemoney #makemoney #case ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

@louiefoxx How to make the big bucks! #bigbucks #twentydollars #onedollar #magictrick #louiefoxx #hotelroom #hotel #moneymagic #sleightofhand ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

@louiefoxx Dizzy Dollar Trick! #onedollar #dizzy #moneymagic #magictrick #louiefoxx #dollarbill #numismatics #sleightofhand ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

@louiefoxx Inflation Explained! #inflationexplained #dollarbill #twentydollars #magic #moneymagictrick #sleightofhand #magician #howtoincreasemoney #magictrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Those five tricks are all essentially the same trick, just presented differently to hopefully give them all a different feel. Those five are in addition to how I do it in virtual shows. I think getting a lot of mileage with a single gimmick is a big advantage with social media, where you can get multiple videos out of a single trick!

-Louie

Strait Jacket and Chain Escape!

I’m relearning to do the strait jacket escape while wrapped in 50 feet of chain. One of the things that I recently figured out, which made me feel dumb that I never realized this before was the chain management.

I used to just throw the chain in the bottom of my case. The problem with that is that it would frequently tangle. I started keeping it on a spool and it makes a huge difference! The spool makes laying it out and cleaning it up really easy!

The locks also are locked to the spool making it an neat and tidy package!

-Louie

Charlie Frye’s Sleightly Absurd – Review

I’m finally wrapping up reading Charlie Frye‘s magic book Sleightly Absurd. I picked this up at Hocus Pocus in Fresno way back in October when I was visiting their shop.

This book is a fun read and it has a lot of “non traditional” magic book feeling routines in it. The routines have endings to them, which is something that lacks in many magic books by magicians who aren’t out there working. The other thing is that Charlie isn’t a “I do easy stuff so I can concentrate on performing” type of person. He’s doing things with whatever level of difficulty that the trick requires to make the trick the best. Sometimes that’s means hard sleight of hand and sometimes it’s a math principle. I totally respect that approach!

One of the interesting things for me is towards the back of the book there’s Charlie’s approach to Any Card at Any Number. It’s a fairly standard approach where you use a memorized deck and a variety of techniques to get the card at the desired number. He does a great job of breaking down his thought process how determines the best way to go about it and describes many scenarios.

For me the best part is how he calculates the stack number backwards (from the face of the deck).

I had to read that part about half a dozen times for it to make sense for me and once I did, it made total sense! I also figured out a way to get rid of having to remember the pairs, they all all up to 3 or 13, so there’s no memorization of the five pairs, just remembering one rule. This is a game changer for me, it makes the doing the math from the face of the deck insanely easy! This one little thing is worth the price of the book if you use a memorized deck!

This is a great book and totally worth the $75 it sells for!

– Louie

Vintage Magic Trick: Fly Cards II by Aldo Columbini

I was playing with Fly Cards II by Aldo Columbini from 1991. I’m not familiar with Fly Cards I, so I can’t compare the two to talk about the improvements that this one has over the original. The effect is similar to an ace assembly, you have four cards with flies on them and a dozen blank cards. You make put 3 blank cards on each card with a fly. The first fly disappears and reappears in the next packet, so that packet now has two flies. Then those disappear and reappear in the third, so that packet now has three. Finally the three flies disappear and you accidentally tap the fourth packet revealing the surprise ending of four smashed flies.

Here’s a demo:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick! Fly Cards II by #AldoColumbini #magictrick #magic #sleightofhand #cardmagic #elmsleycount #antiquemagic #louiefoxx #petermaloney #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

What I like about the trick is the progressive assembly, where the flies keep moving to the next packet. What I don’t like is the flies. It’s strange theming, maybe something like honey bees would be better, but then the smashed ending would have to be different as you don’t want to smush honey bees. I think this idea would be interesting in an ace assembly context, however the problem is that I don’t think it would work out as you’re passing off one card as two several times.

It’s a good trick, and I think if someone spent some time thinking of a better theme OR used it as a custom thing for a social media video it’d be useful!

-Louie

Harvesting Magnets and Shims

Whenever I get any product that comes in the fancy box that has a magnetic flap in it, I always rip out the magnets and metal shims before I recycle the boxes.

The magnets and shims are very thin, which makes them great for magic!

The round shims are perfect for adding t playing cards or dollar bills!

Look around you at product packaging that you would normally just get rid of. There’s tons of useful things, like clear, rigid plastic. I used that to make the gimmick for my signed cracker routine.
The round shims are perfect for adding t playing cards or dollar bills!

Look around you at product packaging that you would normally just get rid of. There’s tons of useful things, like clear, rigid plastic. I used that to make the gimmick for my signed cracker routine.

Magician Garage Sale!

Over the weekend my buddy Mike Dobias hosted a magic garage sale! Mike had bought out the inventory of Mickey Hades magic shop in the 1990’s and wanted to get what was left of it out of his garage. He also had some of his old personal props from his shows and let me bring a couple of boxes of stuff.

There were some fun surprises, like a stack of Bill Goldman’s Monkey in the Middle trick, Dean Gunnarson’s Escape Artist trading cards and Bob Driebeck’s Necktie Servante that was put out by Nielson Magic!

I took home a banker’s box full of old packet tricks, which will end up on my Tik Tok where I show “vintage magic tricks”. If you aren’t following me on Tik Tok, shoot over there and give me a follow at: https://www.tiktok.com/@louiefoxx

Then there was the social aspect of hanging out and BSing with other magicians! It was a fun day!

-Louie

Evaporation + FREE Out For Beers

Close up magic vest

When I was a teenager there was an ad in magic magazines for a close up magician’s vest. The thing that made this vest unique was that it had something like 50 pockets! That’s a lot of close up magic to carry around with you…50 tricks!!!

When I was at Hocus-Pocus a couple of weeks ago, I ran into one of them and it was glorious (in a strange way)!

This is something that I think is supposed to be worn under a coat, so its not super visible…however I can imagine seeing a clueless magician wearing this as outerwear to show off how many tricks they have on them!

It was great to finally see something that I had only seen the ad for and even back then thought it was a questionable idea…but I’m also glad that someone had a vision and brought this to market. I think you have to go too far to know you’ve gone too far!

-Louie

Low to the Ground

During one of my street style sets at the fair yesterday I had a group of younger kids show up and I knocked my table down so that they could see the table top.

I was surprised that this instantly built a larger crowd. I’m not sure why more people wanted to watch. It does make the table top more visible to the front edge of the crowd and maybe it makes people huddle in and look like they’re watching something interesting. I’m not sure why it worked, and maybe that was a one off sorta thing, but I’m going to try it again today and see what happens.

-Louie

Happy Birthday USA!

In the USA it’s Independence Day, which is the birthday of the United States. Way back in 1796, which is the country’s bicentennial, there was a trick put out called Happy Birthday USA: The Bi-Centennial Card Trick by Shigeo Futagawa.

This is a card trick where you have cards that all have red and white stripes on the back, and the numbers on the front. The numbers are 1976, and they change into 1776 and then the backs change to make a flag!

Here’s a demo of the trick:

@louiefoxx Fourth of July Vintage Magic Trick! #fourthofjuly #4thofjuly #america #1776 #usa #cardtrick #closeupmagic #vintagemagictrick #antique #louiefoxx #vintage #independenceday ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

What I thought was interesting is that in a era of Emerson and West packet tricks with confusing instructions, this has very well laid out instructions that are easy to read!

This trick is a good example of capitalizing on an event in the future. I wonder how many of these that were sold, but I also wonder how many were unsold and thrown away on new years day in 1977!

-Louie