What’s in the Box?

Yesterday I mentioned that I paid $15 for a box of magic stuff. All I had to go off of was the picture below:

box of magic tricks

Well, when I went to pick it up, it was actually 4 boxes!

used magic tricks

This led to a challenge as I’m travelling right now, so my car has my show in it and I won’t be home for a few days. Also quite often old magic has a musty smell, and I don’t want to have that smell in my car all week and I just don’t have space for it.

I stopped at a grocery story and used their parking lot to sort through the boxes. Like most boxes of used magic, most of the stuff is junk.

used magic tricks

Here’s an overall look at some of the boxes:

The VHS tapes have great material on them, I dont’ have a VHS player and there’s really no market for them. I did find a lo

used magic tricks

The stuff that I didn’t want filtered down the magic food chain. These were left at a performer’s house who lives near where I got the boxes.

Here’s the pile of stuff that I kept:

used magic tricks

There’s a MAK french arm chopper, MAK Chen Lee Water Suspension, snake basket, multiplying bottles (india), sword thru neck (india), and a lot of other misc stuff.

One of the surprises were two Ormand McGill books and they both were signed!

These boxes of magic were a solid buy for $15 and since I was in the area and didn’t have to travel to get them.

-Louie

MAK Magic’s Mint Condition

My best guess is in the late 1990’s MAK Magic put out Mint Condition. This is an expanded shell coin that had the back of the coin on the inside. That allows you to show both sides of the shell when it’s empty.

MAK Magic's Mint Condition

I’ll admit that when it came out I thought it was a dumb idea. It was an improvement that didn’t really improve how a shell coin is used. For most close up magic, I still think it’s not necessary.

The place where this coin is great it for social media videos. Where is someone knows about a shell coin, it removes that when you show both sides of the coin. Social media is a great place for things that correct little details in magic tricks that are overkill for an in person performance.

The other thing is that I don’t think that Mint Condition was a huge seller, as a there’s not a lot of mentions of it when I do a Google Search and I can’t recall seeing one pop up on a used magic site. I guess them being uncommon is good for people who are using them!

-Louie