magic show – Page 18 – MagicShow.Tips

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!

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

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

Magic Uncorked – Feb 2026

A couple of nights ago, I went out to see Magic Uncorked in Portland, OR. This show happens every few months at a wine bar called Ora et Labora. It has close-up magic in the bar, then a parlor-style show in the event space.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to see any of the close-up magic as I rolled in a bit late. I thought it started at 7 pm, not 6 pm, however Jacob Grier showed me a cool card trick in the hands triumph as everyone was moving from the bar to the event space.

The show is hosted by Dave Gregory, who, along with his wife, owns the wine bar. Dave is a great host, and does a trick to open the show and after intermission.

The first half of the show is done by John Stevens. John does a solid show and one of the highlights for me is the version of 100th Monkey he did! Most of the versions of it that I had previously seen fell flat, but not this one! The only other version I’ve seen was the one Darren Brown did at the Cort Theater on Broadway.

This month’s show had Jonathan Molo as the headliner. I’d briefly met Jonathan somewhere in CA (probably Fresno) a few years ago, so I was excited to see his show. Jonathan puts on a fun, high-energy show. The show’s frame is really his family, which is a super relatable throughline!

One thing I noticed was that both John and Jonathan use handheld microphones rather than headsets. More and more performers are moving away from the headset mics. It takes a bit more skill to use a handheld mic as a magician, however, it allows you to have conversations with people onstage and easily get them mic’d.

-Louie

More Snake Basket Work

I’m still working on my Snake Basket Magic Routine. The basket won’t be a basket; it will be a box. I’ve written on this blog before about why I’m not using a basket for the snake. I want the box to look like a shipping crate, but it also must be light and pack as small as possible. I started with a cardboard frame with gaff tape hinges.

I then covered the middles of the panels with wood patterned contact paper.

Finally I did the corners with a wood patterned duct tape to give it the crate look.

This gave me the look that I was going for without the weight of wood, and it packs flat!

-Louie

Portland Magic Jam

The Portland Magic Jam in Portland, OR, is coming up, and it’s got a great lineup!

I just found out that I’ll be performing in the Friday night show! I’ll also have a dealer table with some vintage magic, as well as some of the magic tricks that I make.

You can register at https://pdxmagicjam.com/ They also have an amazing refund policy if you can’t make it, so register now if you’re on the fence about going!

-Louie

Talking To Strangers – Magic Podcast

The magic review site Magic Orthodoxy has a blog about getting started performing magic for people you don’t know. It’s called Talking to Strangers and I was a guest on it!

You can listen to my episode on Spotify at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nX5NWXTQ2TmoX52uyPjhj
and you can watch it here:

Hope you learn something from my past experiences!

-Louie

Dice Force

For a show I’m doing in a couple of months, I needed a way to force a number (really a position in a row of things). I didn’t want to use the Hot Rod Force, and my normal default is the Quinta Force, but I wanted to try to figure out something new.

My idea was to put a die in a film can and have someone shake it, and that would force the number.

First of all, I didn’t want to use a die that’s missing a number, and you eliminate numbers as they’re rolled. I’ve seen too many shows where that method is used, and it takes forever to get the last item eliminated, as that number just doesn’t come up.

Other methods I didn’t want was to use a die that’s all the same number or a magnetic die. My goal was to try to come up with a NEW method before I resorted to old methods. Even if I don’t use the method I came up with, it’s fun to try.

Here’s what I came up with:

I think this method had potential. Is it a lot of work to accomplish what a magnetic die could do? Yep.
Is the method interesting? Yep!

-Louie