Reviews: Read What Others Are Saying: page 7
213 ★★★★★ reviews
145 ★★★★★ reviews
90 ★★★★★ reviews
130 ★★★★★ reviews
Victory Bouquet
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Peter Heß (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Friday 03 January, 2025)
A view into the years of WW2. Cardboard magic, magic with very cheap and simple materials. I use some of the ideas for kids at magic circus.
Miniature Haunted House
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Peter Heß (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Friday 03 January, 2025)
Ghosts and more Ghosts :-) It is one of the classics you must read. Nice mechanics without overengeneered electronics. Pure classic animation.
Bammo Crambazzled Dossier
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Dr. Hernán Benavides (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Friday 03 January, 2025)
Anything from Bob is "of the wall good". He uses the most recondite of methods.
Frank Garcia's Sponge Balls
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Adam Schofield (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 02 January, 2025)
Covers some basic moves and a text description of the '10 count'. Very few illustrations - all line drawings. Word to the wise, to my cost this is NOT the celebrated Garcia book on sponge balls. For a better explanation of the 10 count then the Dacri/Gosh DVD is much better.
Phantini's Contact
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Javier De La Hera (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 02 January, 2025)
Gene Grant never disappoints! An excellent two-person routine that doesn't require tedious training. The effects are practical and the skill required for the card effects is very basic. Good source of ideas for the mindreading couple.
How To Perform Sensational Memory Feats
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Javier De La Hera (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 02 January, 2025)
Buyer beware! Most effects here aren't suitable for the performer who likes to work alone. Many of them are suitable only for stage presentation with all the help a stage gives the performer. Parlor or close-up workers will have difficulty using some methods (if they even manage to adapt them). The card memory test and the giant memory demonstration can be worked by the solo perfomer and are indeed good effects. The magazine test requires a prop no longer easy to find. The serial number memory test assumes you'll know how to make a key move without offering detailed instructions on how to hide it.
If you perform on a theater stage, don't mind some typos and have assistants to help you, well and good. If you like solo work and perform mainly close-up or parlor, you'll find just 2 or 3 effects here that are workable. I'm giving it 2 stars because I expected more material for the solo performer.
Abraca-Poof April 2019
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 30 December, 2024)
My favorite article in this issue is on the use of sponsors to fund your magic shows. Although I've been involved in working with sponsors for multiple non-profits, I've never thought about applying the same approach to magic. The other articles were interesting as well.
Abraca-Poof April 2018
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 30 December, 2024)
As usual, the author provides useful, real-life advice for working magicians. Most of the articles in this issue center around building or destroying your reputation.
Fundamental Techniques
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 30 December, 2024)
It's Roberto Giobbi, the modern standard for instruction in card handling, providing 30 minutes of video teaching, and it's free on Lybrary.
What else do you need to know to give this five stars?
4 Most
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 30 December, 2024)
This short book provides four fun effects, three of which are basically self-working, and one that requires an intermediate level sleight.
The author provides the simplest handling and presentation required, but each trick could form the basis for a more elaborate routine.
Low Vision Marking System
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 30 December, 2024)
Don't let the title fool you; this is far more than just a system for those with limited vision. It provides several options for a coded marking system for a standard Bicycle Rider deck. The basic pattern provided allows marking more than just value and suit, with additional markings for one-way, and position and sequences for stacked decks.
At a basic level, the system proposed by the author substitutes some (simple) math for improved visibility of the marks. Of course, it won't be long before identifying the marks will become automatic and the math will become unnecessary.
Although you might be familiar with some of the approaches, it's likely that you will find some things that could spark your own marking system.
I would recommend it to anyone who wants ideas for creating a marked Bicycle deck (though it could even help with ideas for other decks).
Stone Cold Mental 3
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Evan Katz (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Sunday 29 December, 2024)
Excellent. Anxiously waiting for the next ones.
My Secret Coding for a Thought-of Card
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Musa Awais (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 26 December, 2024)
Some great ideas in here. While I won’t use the exact code as explained in here, I was immediately able to create a variant code (based off of Biagio’s code) that works for me. That I will be using. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t learn Biagio’s code first. Highly recommended.
Jinx
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Gregg Webb (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 19 December, 2024)
Probably whatever can be said has already been said about the Jinx. Ted Annemann was certainly ahead of his time. And so prolific. The ideas flow. A lot of mental effects with cards, effects with folded paper 'billets', trick envelopes, and more. Even some regular magic tricks with cigarettes and other items. Headline predictions, all kinds of mentalism in fact. I read this compilation of issues of the Jinx many years ago, when I knew next to nothing. Then again later on. This time I am going slowly through it and can absorb only a few articles per day. At this rate it will be a companion for quite some time. Don't expect this to be a quick read, but more like a post-graduate course in the art of deception. 4 years on this and you'll be an expert for sure.
One of Card Magic's Best Kept Secrets
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Maher Alhammad (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 19 December, 2024)
I am familiar with many methods of working with cards and locating a card, but when I watched the video describing the effects, I couldn't figure out how it was done. Then, one principle came to my mind that might be used, although I couldn't find a way to achieve the same result. I thought these effects were done using a specific principle (which is not well-known), but I was wrong.
The principle used is something I've never encountered before. You will see a full historical overview of this principle in the e-book. So, most of it covers this historical overview. The effects are easy to do with little practice, and they will probably fool many top card magicians and laypersons.
If you are looking for a magician fooler, buy this.
My rating: Effectiveness: 5/5 (especially if it's done to a magician) Easy to do: 4/5 (Not very hard, but not too easy. It'll require some practice) Creativity: 4/5 Secrecy: 5/5 Practicability: 3.5/5
When a Hat Drops
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by hal barlow (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 16 December, 2024)
The title would inply that these are impromptu tricks. They are certainly good tricks, but most need gaffs of some sort. Not something you could do "at the drop of a hat".
Practical Mental Effects
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Joel Brondos (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Sunday 15 December, 2024)
These effects are MENTAL! They blow peoples' minds. I really appreciate the fact that these have been made available to novices like myself.
Faromania
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Joel Brondos (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Sunday 15 December, 2024)
I have not found another book or DVD that covers this material. I appreciate the showmanship this work represents.
Card Mastery
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Joel Brondos (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Sunday 15 December, 2024)
Well-done - even a novice like myself can learn a great deal from this work.
The Exception
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by John Paul (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 14 December, 2024)
I purchased this effect after coming across discussions of it on a few magic forums. It really does live up to the hype. Often one will find themselves purchasing effects that don’t live up to the hype, or where the ad copy is misleading in some way. Neither of those things was the case here. I can totally see why this fooled many top-flight card guys. As someone who is a fairly knowledgeable card magician themselves, I didn’t have any proper ideas on how this was accomplished when I saw the trailer. The method really surprised me, in a good way.
While I won’t be using this often, simply because I don’t perform for magicians often, this would make for a great performance piece to show your magician friends. It’s meaningless to perform it for lay spectators because they won’t be able to appreciate the impossibility of it, at least not in a way that a magician would be able to.
Even if you don’t ever perform the trick, it’s worth purchasing just to learn the method, which, with some thought, has other uses as well. It’s a powerful and deceptive tool to add to your knowledge.
Reverse Rings Mystique: Magic More Series
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 14 December, 2024)
This routine reverses the normal linking ring plot of sequentially linking the rings, instead focusing on the unlinking process (or "breaking the chain") and introducing several unique ring handling techniques. It is written in a somewhat scientific tone.
It includes not only the mechanics but also the rationale for the choices made in designing the routine.
Another Sampler: Werner Miller
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 14 December, 2024)
This short ebook contains more well-written and -illustrated samples of mathematical effects from Werner Miller.
It contains over 15 tricks using a variety of different props.
Abraca-Poof August 2017
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 14 December, 2024)
The author discusses three types of magician personalities he has encountered.
He also includes tips for building a backdrop, instructions for making a rip-open change bag, as well as other useful articles.
Abraca-Poof August 2016
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 14 December, 2024)
This issue contains an interesting article on magicians who "steal" bookings by undercutting the prices of other magicians.
It also provides advice on marketing your services as an investment, on non-verbal communication, and on the rewards of planting seeds of kindness.
Abraca-Poof April 2017
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Brad Smithart (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 14 December, 2024)
This issue contains another article on invoicing for charity shows.
It also includes an entertaining article on music licensing, among others.