Jon Racherbaumer products: page 1

This issue of Facsimile includes the complete contents of the first two (and only) issues of Jon Racherbaumer's periodical Marlophile. Jon has reformatted Marlophile, and added some additional routines.

• Publisher's Note
• I
  • Introduction
  • Marlo's Personal Annotation
  • Marlo's Variation Of The Zarrow Shuffle
  • MARLO In IBIDEM (1956-1969)
• II
  • Introduction
  • Marlo's Personal Annotation
  • The Easy Way: A Bottom Deal For The Millions
  • Two Memory Bits
  • Mental lie
  • Slop Shuffle Or Triumph?
  • Whispering Snitch

1st edition 1995, 50 pages; 1st digital edition 2020, PDF 50 pages.

Culling (cards) is not a particularly fashionable technique. During the past forty years, card magicians started to pay closer attention to various ideas and techniques, especially those having broad application. In this treatise three types of culls will be examined:

1. Desired cards are secretly culled during the logical and natural course of an effect.
2. Free selections are controlled (culled) to desired positions during a visible procedure that looks fair and above board.
3. A cull done during another fair procedure that results in separating the four suits in Ace to King order.

Jazz Aces was inauspiciously introduced to the magic world in 1971 when Peter Kane published Another Card Session. It was a fortuitous event because it appeared about the same time the Elmsley Count was gaining favor with magicians from coast to coast. Like weeds in an open field, packet tricks were also popping up everywhere. Furthermore, Kane's routine clarified the transposition aspects of basic Ace Assemblies. Using only 8 principal "players" (cards), his action procedure was simple and direct. Best of all, the final transposition was squeaky clean. As a result it did not take long for Jazz...

"One of the greatest card tricks ever invented." - George Anderson

"It fooled the hell out of me!" - Ted Annemann

"Without any possible doubt, Stewart James' 'Miraskill' is one of the greatest self-working card effects to have appeared in print. Apart from its own value, it is the ideal prelude to 'Out of this World'." - Peter Warlock

'Mexican Joe' refers to a specially crimped card or deck, one that is crimped at diagonal corners in opposite directions.

The first person to publish anything on this crimp was Victor Farelli when he published Farelli's Card Magic. Several years passed before another mention is made. This time it was explained in Dai Vernon's More Inner Secrets of Card Magic. Racherbaumer collects a number of routines and ideas with this crimp. In so doing he weaves his way through some interesting nooks and crannies of card magic history.

• Prologue
• Introduction
• Origins
• The Double Crimp
• Mexican Joe's Crimp: Dai Vernon
• Applying The Work
• Marlo Dead...

Reviving "Between the Palms" one of Alex Elmsley's most offbeat plots. This is sort of a "locked room" mystery with playing cards.

It is an offbeat plot because the implicit aspects of effect, particularly its climax, are not immediately understood or appreciated. Yet the effect still has an emotional impact. Compared to other card tricks being done in 1952 it was very different. (Perhaps its closest cousins may be Fred Braue's "The Prechosen Chosen Card" from The Gen (February 1962) or Brother John Hamman's "Signed Card.")

Effect: The performer removes a card from the deck and, without showing its face, places it between...

Offbeat alternatives of the Three-Card Motif

This compilation makes a distinction between the well-known Three-Card Monte wagering game, and motifs using three principal cards in different ways. All of the motifs challenge a spectator's ability to follow the actions to keep track of certain principal cards as they are physically moved around.

In some of the motifs, the principal cards are moved by the spectator while the performer's back is turned. Then, sight unseen, the performer is able to ascertain the location of a card previously designated as the "money card."

In other motifs...

The All Backs Motif is odd. For one thing, it casts a revealing light on we magician's claim (when it suits our purpose) that we use ordinary cards. That is our decks, which we prefer to borrow, consist of cards that have faces and backs on both sides. Therefore, if we show a deck that consists of all backs and faces we are admitting that such anomalies exist and the cards being used are probably gimmicked in some way. Why do this?

A better question may be - What motivated someone to create such an effect using this kind of deck? That "someone" was Dai Vernon and my guess is that he wanted to...

A letter-sized booklet with glue binding in excellent condition. For the content see the digital edition.

A letter-sized booklet with glue binding in excellent condition. For the content see the digital edition.

"It is one of the very best tricks which can be done for close-up work." - Hugard and Braue from Show Stoppers With Cards

From the Foreword:

Basic Plot:

A selection "lost" in a deck is successfully found by using three...

This short compilation follows on the heels of another compilation titled Dreamwork. Both relate to Bob Hummer's "The Midreader's Dream." Bob Hummer introduced to the magic world many interesting principles and effects. One of the first to make a splash was introduced in 1952. The dreamy dealer ad seemed too good to be true: A spectator merely thinks of a card and then performs a few, unseen dealing procedures with a deck of cards. The magician, whose back was turned throughout these actions, turns and faces the spectator. He takes the deck, briefly scans the cards, and consults a "dream book." He then names...

Beautiful close up magic by Jon Racherbaumer, John Cornelius, Roger Klause, Ed Marlo, Jim Hunter, Steve Draun, Eddie Adams, Lee Fried, Chuck Smith, Phil Goldstein, Tom Mullica, and Simon Aronson. Here is magic that is unique and that you will not see in other books. The ebook is divided into chapters on Coins, Cards, Linking Pins, Mental Magic, and Diversions. You will find such unusual items as Marlo's complete presentation of the Color Vision box, Racherbaumer's close up Miser's Dream, Marlo work on Linking Pins, Cornelius' Coins thru Table, Mullica's version of Jarrow's Cig thru Hanky, and more. The section on card magic (mostly Marlo...

This manuscript is about one trick that incorporates a seminal sorting procedure now given the name Belcho's Disbursive Deal. Over the years the trick eventually morphed into an organized compilation that shares the same identifiable title: "Poker Player's Picnic."

It begins with Vernon Lux, an enterprising amateur who founded the International Society of Junior Magician in 1931 and began a magazine called The Dragon in 1932. Therein Oscar Weigle had a column called "Themes and Schemes" where he explained a trick called "The Million to One Trick." (Later it was changed to "Belchou's Aces.") It's unclear...

The Ascanio Spread is a beautiful false display move, generally used to display 4 cards and hide a fifth one.

From the Introduction:

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• To Begin
  • Racherbaumer Variation
  • Some Comments On The Mechanics Of The...

Although Marlo is generally credited with the Elevator plot, analysis of the action steps taken in the Four Burglars, Jacob's Ladder, and Marlo's Penetration exhibit procedural similarities and could be presented as "elevating tricks" if accompanying patter expressed the "elevator" analogy. As far as the "elevator" trope is concerned, we can credit Bill Simon for naming rights.

• Part One: The Burglazing Beginning
  • Introduction
  • Gibson Puts Perps On Parade
  • Rising Crime / Daryl Martinez
  • Rising Robbers / Jon Racherbaumer
  • Four Burglas / Jerry Mentzer
  • Mystery Of The Penthouse / Nick Trost
  • Burglar Trick / Nick...

Ten card mysteries Annemann would have loved.

This book was part of a two-person three-hour lecture session given by Harry Anderson that Jon gave at a Daytona Magic Conference.

Excerpt from the foreword:

Racherbaumer, a man of words - sometimes strong words, sometimes exotic words, sometimes provocative words, sometimes strange words - but always thoughtful and worth reading, wrote a two year column in The Greater Son of the Bat Jr. journal (S.O.B.jr.). All 24 installments of this column are collected here. You will find a lot of Marlo-vian talk, good tricks and interesting articles. I was not a magician in the late 70s, so I cannot say how it was back then in the 'good old times', but reading Sticks and Stones allowed me to imagine how - I am sure - it must have been.

• EFFECTS ALPHABETICALLY ...

Controlling a card to the top or to the bottom is the most fundamental technique in card magic. Every card magician should have at least one good method to do that. Consequently many authors use the phrase "control card to the top/bottom with your preferred method" and leave the rest to the reader assuming that everyone already has his or her preferred method. While you might have your favorite method, the search for better ones never stops.

In this ebook Jon Racherbaumer describers several - as he calls them 'finessed' methods - to control a card to the top or to the bottom. You should find...

From the Foreword:

While we all intuitively understand what time is, even a child can tell you what time it is, it is a hard concept to fully understand from a scientific point of view. It is hard to define, and wrap your head around. That is part of the intrigue of making it the topic of a magic effect. Particularly for an interested and sophisticated audience it can be a very effective plot line. Jon Racherbaumer explores how magicians have made use of it over the decades, and he has unearthed some remarkable gems.

• Preface
• Foreword
• An Unusual Plot Emerges
  • The Charmed Watch
  • Charles Wicks
• Precursors ...

A selective history of magic squares and routines and performances which are somewhat unusual and different from the regular magic square presentation of 'give me a number and I write down a magic square of that number'.

• Brother Can You Paradigm? (Jon Racherbaumer)
• Harried History of the Magic Square
  • B.A. (Before Annemann)
  • 1930 – Present
  • Wise-Guy Square
• Kick-Starters
  • Okey-Sidokey
  • Charlier Shuffle
• Miscellaneous Matrix Trix
  • Phoning Marrakech
  • Squaring the Deal
  • Upside Down
  • Cool Things about the Magic Square
  • Harry Ending
• References

1st edition 2008, PDF 31 pages....

The meaning of Kabbala, translated from Hebrew, means something received and handed down. This definition resonates. Knowledge of magic, after all, is handed down from generation to generation, from magician to magician, and from teacher to disciple. Prior to xerography and personal computers, most magical knowledge was transmitted in this primitive, semi-private, and intimate means. Word-of-mouth reigned supreme and to a certain extent still does.

The magic scene in the Seventies was a blooming, buzzing place, atwitter with contentiousness and creativity. Close-up magic, particularly with...

Hardcover with dust jacket. Like new condition. For details on the content see the digital edition.