Category: Tricks

Cincinnati Cards!!

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.

Out to 3D Print Lunch…

One of the tricks I’ve been doing a lot lately is my “Free Pitcher of Beer” trick that’s based on the out to lunch magic trick principle. I’m packing for a show and realized I didn’t have any thick rubberbands to hold the cards together. I quickly made a 3d model of a business card holder and printed it out!

His holder has a little recess in it to hold the half card. The half card is actually taped in place, so it can’t come out. In the traditional method, friction holds it in place.

We’ll see how well this actually plays out for real people tomorrow!

Coinistry!!!

The other day after the magic garage sale and we went out to jam at a local bar, we were talking about coin tricks. I brought up the Perpetual Motion Coin Myth from Paul Harris’s books. This is a coin flourish where you hold a coin sideways between two other coins and get the center coin to spin.

I’ve never seen or met anyone who could do it, but we started playing with it and now I’ve done it and seen it done!

That got me thinking, the next branch of magic is going to be COINISTRY! That would be fancy flourishes with coins! Start practicing now!

Tarbell System…

My day got exciting, through a unexpected exchange the other day, I ended up with and original Tarbell System (Tarbell Course in Magic)!

This is a first edition (5th printing) of the Tarbell System. The key about how I ended up with this is simply talking to people and being open to the wacky things that they ask!

I’m a HUGE fan of the Tarbell Course, I even had some shirts made a long time ago:

Chit Chat…

When you’re out performing, I think it’s important to talk to people you meet. I’ve met some really cool people over the years, just by chit chatting with them. At a fair a recently I started chatting with the guy selling mystery bags. His name is Gene Haaheim, he’s an old pitch man. He pitched Svengali Decks a long time ago, and also the magic mouse.

We had a great time chatting about some of the older people in magic who used to work the pitch circuit! Gene also did a couple of good card tricks.

Go out and talk to people at your next gig, you’ll be amazed at who you run into!

Magic Garage Sale…

I’m putting together a magic garage sale on July 11th! It’s a literal garage sale, so you have to show up in person for the deals. What’s left I may try to sell on facebook used magic groups, and a lot of it will probably just go to the dump.

There’s a lot of cool stuff, and I was just going through last night and putting prices on things. The garage sale prices are pretty cheap, there are a lot of deals to be had! If I end up listing stuff on the internet for sale, it will be more than the garage sale prices.

Here’s what I priced yesterday:

There’s a lot more! If you’re going to be in the Seattle area on 7/11/21, send me an email and I’ll give you the details!

Cheap Vanishing Birdcages…

People still shoot me notes asking questions about my Take Up Reel. One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “will it work with the vanishing birdcages from India?”

The answer is yes, here’s a video of me doing it with one of them:

Pretty much if you can vanish it with a traditional wrist to wrist birdcage pull, then you can vanish it with my take up reel!

The A.C.T. Card Trick…

Here’s the second video of me revising a packet trick that I got with a collection of magic that I acquired. Today’s trick is the A.C.T. (another card trick) by Bill Pryor.

Here’s a demo of the trick as written, then how I revised the trick:

The big problem with this packet trick is that the whole effect is a “kicker” without the initial ending. What I mean by that is that you start by asking someone to think of a card, but you never reveal it. You need the initial effect for a kicker to really work. I think at the end spectators will still be thinking, “what about the card I was thinking of?”

Also I don’t think the gags are strong enough to carry the trick past you never revealing the card they are thinking of.

Lecture Review…

During the Pandemic, I did many virtual lectures for magic clubs. I stumbled across a review of one in the Linking Ring magazine:

I really enjoyed doing these lectures. I would like to continue doing them, however moving forward with in person shows opening back up, I honestly don’t think that it would be possible to do them for a donation to the IBM or SAM endowment funds due to my performing schedule. I will keep doing in person lectures at conventions or as I travel and am in an area for the local club. It was nice to be able to give back a little bit!

Four Card Monte…

Recently I ended up with a collection of magic tricks and in that collection there were a bunch of packet tricks. Most weren’t very good, but that got me thinking about trying to improve them. The first one that I tried was called 4 Card Monte, and there are a lot of packet tricks with this title, so don’t judge them all by this one.

Here’s the effect as written in the instructions, then the effect reworked by me:

The trick as written is pretty bad, and doesn’t make much sense with the addition of a fifth card at the end. I think my version where there’s only four cards shown the whole time makes more sense. The addition of the kicker ending really adds a punctuation to the end.

One thing I think that’s important when you get a magic trick is to not discard because you don’t like the trick as written. Play with it and see if you can make it work!