Recently I had a magician reach out to me to let me know there were some vanishing bird cages in a magician’s estate. I didn’t have much information to on as to what one of the cages was.
Obviously one of them is a Milson Worth Silver Meteor vanishing bird cage. This one is cool, because I’ve owned dozens of Milson Worth cage, but never had the instructions, until now!
Now for the interesting cage, the one that’s not clear as to who made it. There wasn’t a lot of information that I could pull from the pictures, so I totally took a gamble when buying it.
Here’s the cage:
It looks a lot like my Owen Magic vanishing bird cage, so here they are side by side:
The dimensions are exactly the same. There are a couple of small differences. The cage I just got isn’t stamped “OWEN” where the cage on the left that’s 100% and Owen is stamped. The lack of a stamp doesn’t mean that it’s not an Owen, as there was a period decades ago were many weren’t stamped. The Owen cage that I already has was much more modern.
Another difference between the two cages are the corner pieces.
The modern Owen cage on the right appears to have the ends peened, where the mystery cage looks like they’re peened and a blob of solder is added. I was chatting with a friend of mine and he found an old Owen Magic Supreme catalog and the ends of the corner bars also have the solder blobs!
This catalog is from the 80’s and back then the Challenge Cage Mystery was $97.50!!!
After asking around a bit, I got this little bit of information:
The size of the rails match those dimensions.
Based on all of this, I’m now 99% confident to call this birdcage and Owen Challenge Cage Mystery!
One problem is that one of the corners needs a repair, it’s missing the solder blob.
I’m sending this out to my birdcage guy and he’s going to repair it and polish up the cage!
-Louie
PS: if you come across a vanishing bird cage, feel free to reach to me to see if I’m interested in buying it!
It’s interesting that you mentioned the Challenge Cage Mystery was $97.50 in the Owen’s catalog from the 1980’s … The price of a new Lindhorst-style cage in 2024 is now in the $1000 – to – $2500 range , but using an Inflation Calculator , a Lindhorst cage that cost $25 in 1948 would have cost around $107.78 in 1984. (so that’s pretty much within $10 of what the Owen’s cage cost in the early – to – mid-1980’s.). BUT using the same inflation calculator a Lindhorst bird cage which cost $25 in 1948 should cost around $326.55 in 2024 taking the current rate of inflation into account, but in fact costs in a range of 3.5x – to – 7x that much in 2024 !!! Even if the cost were 2x more than what the inflation calculator says it should cost, a brand new Lindhorst-style cage would be $653.10 in 2024. Is it just that there are not that many skilled craftsmen around today as there were in the 1940’s – through – 1980’s so the ones who are capable of this kind of work now can pretty much name their price ?
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com
Wow! that’s very interesting.
I think part of the issue with why it’s soo much more is that in addition to prices going up, they’ve changed how they are made. For example on my most current Owen cage, all of the bars are Peened, so no solder blobs at all. That’s a lot more work and uses specialized equipment. So it’s not exactly and apples to apples comparison.
Also the market has changed, the birdcage used to be a lot more common of a trick, and while it has some popularity right now, it’s currently hardly seen by audiences. I think part of that has to do with people doing longer shows instead of shorter acts and fashion. So less demand for something labor intensive means a higher price as they’re essentially being made as a custom item, not in large batches.
Louie