I’m always hunting for vintage magic tricks and recently came across this Gilbert Mysto Magic Set!
The bad news was that it was incomplete and in pretty rough shape.
It was missing a lot of the contents, but it had the mustache!
While the mustache isn’t rare, it’s a frequently missing piece to these kits. This one priced at $199.95 is about double what a complete Gilbert Mysto Magic Set should cost! I didn’t buy this one, but there’s a lot of old magic out there, you just gotta hunt!
-Louie
Sometimes before I go on the road I pick up a couple of magic DVD’s to watch. I have a USB connected DVD player, that I can use to watch these DVD’s on. The silver lining to DVD’s is that they are super cheap right now as everyone is getting rid of them.
This week I took the International Magic Presents: The Jim Cellini Lecture.
This summer I’m working on my street style show, so watching this DVD is helping me learn instead of just watching netflix in the hotel. I’m trying be a good steward of my down time.
-Louie
Here’s a new addition to my vanishing bird cage collection!
This one has the ends of the large bars pointed instead of square. In theory that is going to hang up less than having the ends square.
This is something that I have thought about, but never did to any of my cages. First of all, not all the corners would need to be pointed, just the ones that are on the leading side of the cage. Next, I think that IF this one did hang up on your sleeve, it would really hang up and wedge the sleeve into it making any possible continued yank up your sleeve much harder.
This is a fun cage variation to add to my collection!
-Louie
One trick I’m not a big fan of is bill to orange/lemon/etc. It’s a overdone trick and usually it’s not a surprise to the audience when the bill is in the fruit. A notable exception to this is Nick Lewin’s Lemon Aid routine.
I do a routine that uses a dollar bill, but the dollar isn’t the focus of the trick. It felt like it had a loose end at the finish of the trick. One day I had the idea to make the bill come out of an orange at the end of the trick. What I like about this routine is that the bill doesn’t disappear, so it’s not obvious it’s in the orange immediately when the orange comes into the play.
Then I had to deal with how to give the wet dollar to the person. I found some Evidence bags, and wrote a gag with them.
Now at the end of the routine when I give the signed dollar to the person, I put it in the bag and let them keep it! It’s a fun way to deal with the wet sticky dollar and gets me a couple of laughs!
-Louie
Last week I was doing a show in Astoria, OR. Whenever I’m in that area I swing by and visit Seth who owns the shop.
It’s really a pitch shop that sells magic tricks to tourists, however they really well stocked with a lot of magic that’s for non-beginners.
When I was there I picked up a Rainbow Deck and a copy of the reprint of the book Mind Myth & Magick by TA Waters. This book when it first came out in the mid 1990’s sold for $60. When I was a teenager working in the magic shop, we had a couple of copies of this book and they took probably a decade to sell. This book wasn’t a hot item at the time. While it is a giant book, $60 was about double what a magic book sold for at that time. Then over the next few decades this book became harder to find with copies selling for over $300! This reprint at $99.95 is a great deal!
The only thing that I don’t like about the book is that I’m taking it on the road with me, and it’s the size of a phone book and I’ll be lugging it around the country in my backpack!
-Louie
After long wait, I finally got some custom made gimmicks for my penny to keychain trick.
These were worth the wait and way better than what I had been using for the trick. Having been in magic and creating magic for a while, I’ve got a network of magic builders that I can reach out to for custom projects.
I had a few of these made, as the cost to make one is pretty high, but getting a dozen isn’t much more. I’m hoping to write up instructions for these and have a few of them for sale soon!
-Louie
I came across the book Something from the East by Haruhito Hirata in a box of magic stuff that I had bought recently. There wasn’t a lot of stuff that I liked in the book, but one thing did catch my eye. There’s an oil and water trick in there that has a slightly different mixing procedure that most.
Here’s what it looks like as written:
@louiefoxx Card trick from Japan! #cardtrick #magic #japan #magictrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
I like the two columns of cards and then mixing them one at a time. I don’t like how much process and how confusing the whole routine is. I also don’t like that you can’t show the second packet at the end.
I tried to streamline the effect to make it less confusing and here’s what I initially came up with:
@louiefoxx Replying to @Voyager Jim ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
It’s not the best, but I think it’s better.
I do have two more versions that are inspired by Haruhito’s routine, and I’ll post about them later. These two version are very different in method, but keep the two columns of cards.
-Louie
Here’s one of the problems with AI, it’s that you have to check it. Basically, you are doing the work anyway. A good example of that is from an event that I performed at. Despite having provided them with an introduction and one being available on my website, this event decided to have AI write it.
I worked as a street magician when I was in high school, but wouldn’t say I’ve worked as one in the last almost 30 years. I have never appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brian, which I’m assuming is just a misspelling of Conan O’Brien.
This is why AI isn’t useful, if I need to go back an “fact check” everything it’s more work than actually doing the research correctly, or simply asking someone for their intro.
-Louie
The newest addition to my vanishing birdcage is also one of the most interesting to me. This one came from a Potter and Potter auction and there really wasn’t much bidding action on it. I got it for $150 (gavel price) and they simply listed it as from the 1920’s and German.
This cage has some very fine detail work on it. Like the super tiny sleeve guard, there were two, but one is missing. The screws that hold it on are very fine!
This cage is missing a bar and it appears to have been repaired at some point. I also don’t think that the ring that the pull attaches to is original.
Another fun this is that this cage has a perch and this perch is a spring! I guess that is a lot easier to attach than a wooden one, and more flexible!
This is a fun addition to the collection!
-Louie
I must be getting better! I did a show for middle school kids at 7:40am and it went great!
Middle school (grades 6-8) are notoriously one of the hardest age groups to perform for. They don’t really relate to silly humor that I’d use for younger kids or smarter humor that I’d used for older kids. It’s just a small age group that I find really hard to perform for. Then add in the 7:40am when they’re still waking up and it sounds like a rough gig.
The show went well. Whenever I perform for a group of kids I try to aim my material slightly older than younger than the group. I’ve found kids will “age up” much easier than down. If I do material that’s designed for younger kids it will turn them off quickly and they’ll dismiss the show as a “kid show”, which they’re above.
I opened the show with my Any Card at Any Number and that immediately had their attention. I know a lot of magicians think that ACAAN is a boring trick and many are, however for this group, if it was, they’d be asleep by the time we got to the card! ACAAN done correctly, I’m not talking about routine/patter, but method is an amazing and compelling trick. Once you start adding procedure into it like rolling dice or a calculator, then it becomes less amazing. Simply saying, “name a card, name a number” and that’s where their card it without any BS is a great trick!
The moral of the story is sometimes taking a show that you know will be a challenge will help you grow as a performer.
-Louie
