Cards: page 79

Once in a great while an intelligent and thought-provoking work is released to the magic fraternity. On those rare occasions, the craft is moved closer to the attainment of ultimate perfection. It exhorts those who read it to more profound thought. This is such a book and we are honored to bring it to you.

Pasteboard Perpensions was the first major offering from Wesley James, a name that has long been respected among the underground. His book is not fluff, rehash or re-workings of existing handlings. Every one of the twenty-five plus items in this book adds something new, significantly improved,...

A Treatise on the E.G. Brown 12-card Thought-of card Transportation

"One of the Strongest card effects you can ever perform."

"You can expect to hear audible gasps."

"...the roomful...sat speechless."

"A card at a purely thought-of position vanishes...

A great book on the tricks of the trade of professional gamblers, how they cheat and get an advantage in the game. From the introduction:

This is an unusual mix of contents including magic card tricks, card games and how gamblers cheat at those games, other swindles and scams, a section on dice and cheating at dice games, as well as moralizing against the evils of gambling.

Jonathan H. Green was a reformed gambler, who made a career exposing cheating via lectures, presentations and books.

An earlier shorter edition of this book was published under the title Games and Tricks with Cards.

If you are looking for an edited version and somewhat modernized rendition of this book you can find it here.

• Chapter I
  • Invention Of Cards
  • Mysterious Trick...

The four aces are removed from a red backed deck. The Ace of Spades is placed on top of the red deck as the three other aces are lost one by one into a blue deck. After a magical gesture, the aces disappear from the blue backed deck and reappear on top of the red deck, under the Ace of Spades!

Excerpts from a few Magic Cafe reviews:

"How the aces "move" seems to confuse the spectator...and they have a weird look on their face, like "how is this possible!??". What I personally like about this one is that you end clean!!!"

"An assembly type trick, which is different from any other assembly...

Concerning marks and stamps, portable and fixed devices, manipulation of cards and other matters of interest to lovers of draw.

This is one of the better early books on card advantage play. We can be almost certain that Erdnase read this book.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Marks And Stamps
• Watermark
• Disfigurement Of Edges
• Nail Impressions
• Ruffling
• Roughening
• Bleaching
• Crimping
• Erasing
• Evaporating
• Glazing
• Enamel
• Acidulated
• Other Marks
• Pricking
• Trimmed
• Briefs
• Wedges
• Strippers Or Humps
• Scratches
• Filling And Burnishing
• Assorted
• Cut-Off
• Shading
• Scrolling
• Stamped Or Readers
• Portable...

This was a piracy of Hugh J. Johnston's and F. B. Sterling's book Modern Card Miracles.

A treatise on card systems and setups, as well as effects that will fool laymen and magicians alike!

Presentation, secrets, routine and patter are all included. Because most of the effects rely on subtlety instead of difficult sleights, even amateur performers can now fool with professional-caliber presentations. Included are card miracles for parlor, platform, club and stage, as well as effects that will garner free publicity if performed for newspaper editors and reporters. While advertisements say that no sleight of hand is required, one simple sleight...

New Century Pairs Re-Paired

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Bit of History
• Chapter 2: Judah's Mutus Nomen (S.J. Mutus Dedit Trick)
• Chapter 3: Thoughts on the Classical Effect
• Chapter 4: Third Person Singular: 30 cards in play, 3 selections. After the Judah shuffle, top ten cards are put aside and the rest laid out. Performer reveals the third card without seeing any of the faces.
• Chapter 5: There Are No Words: The basic effect with no code words, just a modified shuffle and a few simple arithmetical rules.
• Chapter 6: Poker Four-ay: 20 cards, 4 selections by four different people. All four indicate...

An excellent collection of sleight-less card tricks. Some require a confederate but in all cases the author provides alternative methods and presentations to eliminate the need for a confederate. Each effect is taught with an effective presentation.

• I: The Four Burglars
• II: Divination
• III: An Exhibition Of Thought-Reading
• IV: The Disappearing Ace
• V: Another Thought-Reading Trick
• VI: Hypnotic Selection
• VII: The Four Burglars Again
• VIII: Another Method Of Divination
• IX: Bringing Back The Ashes
• X: Thought-Reading Extraordinary
• XI: Telepathy

1st edition 1914, PDF 32 pages

You show a little notepad where an empty drawn window is depicted. Have a spectator pick a card and mentally tear off a corner. You now throw or cascade the cards towards the notepad and suddenly the chosen card is seen behind the window. However, a corner is missing. Snap your fingers over the missing corner and it appears behind the window.

Ideal for strolling and street magic.

You will receive PDF templates to print out and an explanation video which explains all the details for preparation and performance.

1st edition 2017, length 41 min

An underground classic, now available as an ebook! This amazingly insightful book, written by a newspaper reporter, contains full details of gambling devices and methods used by professionals to beat and cheat casinos and other players.

Also described and illustrated are rigged carnival and gambling games, card gambling games, marked cards, holdouts, and much, much more.

Not content to describe methods that others may also have exposed, Meyer went the extra step to purchase the rights to gambling systems that sold for as much as $25 each. These are also detailed, in their various author's...

Nic Holson brings you a novel way to reveal any card ... before it has been chosen with one cut and a pair of scissors. It's not your usual pick a card trick. It goes further than this and your deck remains intact.

• Perform Hands on or Hands off
• With or without scissors
• Close up, Parlor, Stage
• Use a standard deck; one time set up
• Ideal for walk around
• Easy to do

1st edition 2017, 10 pages.

Two card routines and a couple of tips and stories from the recollections of the author.

• Shifting Sands: a routine using a sand frame
• The "Three-Repeat Tenner"

1st edition 1939, 14 pages; PDF 11 pages.

NOTE: These are the instruction sheets that come with the trick. This PDF does not explain how to make up a deck.

The Jumbo Pop Eyed Popper Deck is one of the most used "trick decks" of professional magicians and mentalists from all over the world. This "secret weapon" is one of the cleanest ways to force a card without sleight of hand. This deck is drastically improved over older versions.

No more fumbling to separate paired cards. This has been a problem for many magicians. These cards have been especially prepared so you only have to place your thumb on any of the four corners and the...

Polishing and old principle of mooted origin ...

Jon Racherbaumer explores an old but fascinating self-working trick which can be performed with any set of counters, be they cards, sticks, stones, coins, matches, business cards, bottle caps, gummi bears, ...

• Prelude
• Introduction
• My Introduction To The Version With Playing Cards
• The Quickie Card Trick
• Beginnings
  • A Novel Card Trick (Howard L. Grant)
  • Toothpick Magic (U. F. Grant)
  • Counting Trick (Rufus Steele)
  • A Matter Of Debit And Credit (John Northern Hilliard)
• Spin-Offs
  • Balancing Debit And Credit (Ian Baxter)
  • The Trick That Fooled Einstein (Harry Franke) ...

Many performers like to end their Ambitious Card routine by making the card vanish from the deck and cause it to reappear in some impossible location such as their wallet or the card box. The problem with that is that the effect of the Ambitious Card is that the selected card continuously rises to the top of the deck. Once the card vanishes from the deck, it is no longer the Ambitious Card. It is a vanished card. When it is produced from the wallet or wherever it becomes a reappearing card.

Nobunaga Rising is a perfect ending to the Ambitious Card because it seems just as impossible as the...

Interesting here are not only the many card tricks described but also a section on crooked gambling at the very end.

[Note that pages 11-14 are missing in our original from which this digital edition has been prepared.]

• Instructions For Amateurs
• How To Make The Pass
• Forcing A Card
• The "Long Card"
• The Divining Card
• Deceptive Shuffles
• To Smuggle A Card
• To Slip A Card
• To Carry Away A Card
• To Place A Card
• The Ten Duplicate Cards—To Reveal A Person’s Thoughts
• The Changeable Ace
• The Convertible Aces
• The Metamorphosed Cards
• The Gathering Of The Clans
• To Tell The Number Of Cards By The Weight
• To Make A Card Pass From One Hand Into The Other
• The Card Hit Upon By Guess
• Ups...

Novel Concepts with Key Cards. No sleight-of-hand is needed for any of these effects. Ideal for both magicians and mentalists.

Imagine taking a borrowed, shuffled, incomplete deck, mixing it a bit yourself, and offering it to a volunteer for a cut. The volunteer then cuts each half separately, chooses a card from one half, and buries it in the pack himself. Yet despite these difficult conditions, you are able to locate the selected card with absolute certainty. That is the premise of this ebook.

The Straddle Key concept is a breakthrough in key card theory. I have tested this material...

They pick a card (no force), they return it to the deck, they shuffle - as much as they want. You pull out a written prediction (genuinely pre-written; no swami) and it tells them how many cards from the top of the deck their card will be after shuffling. They - or the performer - deals down to that number of cards and there it is, their card at the predicted location.

Note: The prediction may be off by one, two, three or possibly more places depending on how well you master this skill. You will also need a stripper deck even though you will not be using it to strip out any cards.

• deck...

The oil and water effect is a classic of card magic, some love it, some hate it. If one has ever seen Rene Lavand do it slow motion with one hand you probably love it. But there is only one Rene Lavand. Some say the effect of red and black cards separating is rather weak, until Roy Walton added a kicker in 1969 where half the cards change to Queens. Dave Bendix tweaked Walton’s handling. Bob Stencil and Terry LaGerold devised a narrative that logically excused the surprise appearance of the Queens. Jon Racherbaumer and Jeff Busby independently expanded the kicker to not only change half the...

From the foreword:

Imagine this:

• You turn your back
• They shuffle the deck
• They select one card
• They replace it reversed in the deck
• They shuffle again
• You turn to face them, put the cards in the box, and you read their mind.

1st edition 2017, length 18 min

Rebirth is a fast, fiery Torn and Restored effect, which leaves them with an impossible souvenir, and a cool story to tell their friends. It also looks great on video. The gimmick is very easy to make, and there is no ditching involved.

1st edition 2017, length 18 min

This is a classic on card magic covering sleights, routines, special cards, and apparatus. It is very likely that already S.W. Erdnase read this book.

• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I: PRINCIPLES OF SLEIGHT OF HAND
  • The Pass
  • To Force a Card
  • The Change
  • To Palm a Card
  • The False Shuffle
  • To Slip a Card
  • The Ruffle
  • To Throw a Card
  • To Spring the Cards from One Hand to the Other
• CHAPTER II: SLEIGHT OF HAND TRICKS
  • The Cards Passing up the Sleeve
  • The Card and Cigarette
  • To Pass a Card Through a Handkerchief
  • To Pass any Number of Cards along the Sleeve, and Produce them from the Breast Pocket ...