used magic – MagicShow.Tips

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:

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

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.

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

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:

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

Thrill of the Hunt!

People always ask me where I find all of the vintage magic stuff that I own or sell. Some of it comes from conventional things like digging through bins at magic shops or magic auctions. Then the unconventional things like garage sales or whatever.

I just paid $15 for this box of magic and I’ll pick it up later today. I just happened to be doing a show in the town where it is.

It looks like mostly junk from the picture, but at $15 for the whole box, I’m willing to lose that on the very low odds that there’s something worthwhile inside.

Personally I really like the excitement of not knowing what’s in the box! It’s like searching for treasure. I will say that I have no problem throwing away the junk, and I think that’s where a lot of magic collectors go wrong, they keep everything even the junk and end up with a garage full of crap.

Personally I’m a collector, not a hoarder…despite what my wife thinks!

-Louie

Jerry Andrus Optical Illusions

One of my hobbies is treasure hunting through old boxes of magic tricks. There are two things I like about it, the first is finding something really cool or collectible and the second is trying to figure out what things are. I love finding parts to tricks that I’m unfamiliar with and trying to reverse engineer what they’re supposed to do.

One of the things from a recent magic box that I got were some Jerry Andrus optical illusions:

jerry andrus trizonal space warper optical illusion

This is a Trizonal Space Warper from 1981 and it’s the size of a record! It’s actually intended to be put onto a record player to create the spin. I was chatting with someone who knows a lot more about Jerry Andrus that me and he said that there were about 25 of this one made and of the 25 only about ten ever sold. that would make this is a pretty rare product from Jerry!

This is a fun one to have in my collection!

-Louie

Vanishing Birdcage For Sale

Lately I’ve been on a downsizing kick, and cleaning out my office. Some of the things I’ve decided to sell are my duplicate Vanishing Birdcages. I’ve got a several of the same cages in various conditions. Here’s one that I’m selling:

This cage had a bar broken and a previous owner had done a repair. You can see in in the bottom left of the picture below:

This repair was probably in the best place it could possibly be. The lead edge contacts your sleeve a lot less than if it was done on any other corner.

I made a quick video showing the cage in action:

If you’re interested in this cage it’s currently on eBay:
UPDATE: it has sold

-Louie

Magic Garage Sale

A couple of days ago I hosted a Magic Garage Sale and it was a hit! The turn out was great and the amount of magic that was re-homed that was staggering!

This is a fun way to build some community within the magic scene. We all hung out for a few hours, and this is a way more intimate thing than a more formal magic swap meet or magic auction.

Then afterwards a few of us had some beers and jammed some magic!

I’m really glad I put this together, it was a lot of fun!

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!

Magic Collection…

Many years ago I used to buy magic collections of magicians who had passed. I would keep the books or props that I wanted and resell the rest. It’s been a while since I have done that for myself. Last year a did sell off a collection of magic that was a friend of mine who had passed and all the money went to his son.

The other day I was contacted about a magic collection and went out and picked it up. The person had one of my Evaporation tricks, and this was from the original run of 36 that I sold at a magic convention in Canada.

One thing that I think people don’t realize is that most of the stuff in a magic collection is worthless. Usually about half is unsellable because it’s damaged, counterfeit or shipping would cost more than the prop.

You should be realistic about what your collection is worth and to not really count things that have a used value of less than $20. Sure, they do add up, but they are hard as hell to sell!