4 Stars

This effect was first known as The Mystery of Mysteries and was created c. 1880 by Martinka in the USA and Zauber-Klingl in Europe.  It was made popular by the versions manufactured by West German manufacturer Zaubertechnik Haug (often know as ZT Haug) and Mephisto-Huis.

Bali Magic Woodworks make some good wooden items, and their items look great on the web. But once delivered they sometimes fall a little short of the effects they are copying – at least in the two items I’ve seen from them. When this box arrived it was literally impossible to use it. I spent about an hour sanding and cleaning things up and now it works perfectly. For a 60+ year old product this would be a little more acceptable, but for a brand new item this should not be the case.

Also the latch on the smaller box really should be smaller or at least without a top lip.  This is purely aesthetic, but it bothered me and with a little attention could have been avoided.  When it comes to these more collectible items, attention to detail really does matter 🙂

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What a beautiful item from the talented craftsman from Croatia, Damir Djanis.  This is the sixth of Damir’s items released by George Robinson at Viking Mfg. and there is no doubt it is magnificently crafted.

However, as an effect initially it did not do much for me. The provided patter is interesting enough if you like telling stories. And, if you are a good story teller, then I’m sure the spectators will also be entertained.  But I don’t think it matters how good a story teller you are, they will not be that amazed by the reveal at the end. Telling a lay person what is inside a cleverly constructed magic box is not that amazing to them.  Something like the Tele-Vision Box which has a cleaner and simpler construction is much more effective because of the two boxes and there seems no way you could ever see inside both.  But with just a single lid it doesn’t take too much to think of ways to look inside with a peek here and a mirror there (to the layman at least).

That being said if you are collecting Damir’s magic you are probably doing it for the sheer joy of owning beautiful magic and probably not performing them to anyone but your magic buddies and for that purpose it is perfect 🙂 With the one exception of Damir’s Intangibility I could not see myself performing any of his other effects to lay people.  To be fair this is also true with a huge amount of the collectible magic we all love and cherish, so Damir is no different in this regard 🙁

However, after some thought about this problem I came up with a routine that I would be happy to perform to lay people that is entertaining and I believe quite amazing using El Duco’s Signed Card to Hip Wallet – please check out the Speed Demo 🙂 🙂

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This effect was invented by Marvillo and you can see his original one here.

It sounds like a great effect and I would love to see this performed over the counter such that you would instantly purchase it 🙂

I think the routine is a little weak. As written you are expected to show clearly only two dice and not the third (gimmicked one) because in the instructions it says:

“The spectator has seen the first two dice and will not expect anything different of the third gimmicked die.”

Maybe this would true if you allowed the spectator to examine all three dice at the beginning.  But if you don’t and instead show the first two dice clearly and partially hide the third one, all the spectator is going to think – what the heck is going on with that die?

So you need to start with the three normal die, switch out for the gimmicked one, then switch it back again at the end.  None of this is the end of the world, but it does make performing this in a convincing way quite a bit harder.  In addition the locking of the dice with the pins is not very clean and I’d like to see that done smoothly.

All in all I am not impressed with the routine.  But as the advert says the prop itself is beautifully crafted and that is true and they were made by the close-up master manufacturer himself: Per Clausen 🙂

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This is easily the best quality item I’ve ever seen from the original Sasco and it was first sold in the early 1990’s. This is a really nice set and looks great.  You do have to do the famous Okito move and you can be the judge of how good I do it in the Speed Demo (let’s hope!).

If you like the video then you’ll almost certainly be able to do it better, because if you watch my videos you’ll know performing sleights is not one of my strengths 🙁

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Thanks to Nick Trost (Card Magic of Nick Trost, pg. 99) the history of using playing cards for running a horse race traces back to at least 1914  and a race game called “Minoru” after King Edward VII’s racehorse.  Then John Scarne described the Horse Race card game c. 1949 in Scarne on Cards and in 1952 Toni Koynini was the first magician to use the horse race as a gambling demonstration with  his routine Derby.

Harries’ Goran Klyve has created a wonderful version of a horse race that is very simple to perform, looks bright and colorful, and seems very clean to the spectator.  The method is not earth shattering but very workable and giving the cards to both spectators to shuffle half each seems totally fair.

(Notice: there are some black marks and a small patch of sharpie touch-up at one end where I tried to clean off the marks with acetone, which was a bad idea.  But you will barely notice it – I did include a photo near the end to try and highlight the situation, but it was quite difficult to photograph because it is barely noticeable, and certainly has no impact on the effect.)

Notice: Use your own currency, $100 not included 🙁

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Fifth times a charm? Not for me 🙁

So here is yet another version of the T.A. Waters’ amazing Box Office which has been recreated so many times it is hard to keep up.

Magic Wagon themselves have now produced five different versions of this effect. For this version they have changed the internal mechanism quite drastically. As a result you no longer require a paper clip attached to the predictions, and the prediction is seen roughly in the center of the box.

However, for me, these are only things magicians even think about, and I prefer the simpler classic mechanism.  I found this new method a little more finicky and the change does not seem like progress.  The box looks amazing and it will look great in your collection.  But if I was going to perform this effect I would use Mind Paintings II or preferably my custom version here which I feel are both superior to this version.

Magic Wagon’s other versions of Box Office:

• Mental Safari
• Mental Safari Deluxe
• Mind Paintings
• Mind Paintings II
• Egyptian Prediction Chest

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Harry Keyl from Holland created a nice line of quality plastic magic which has become quite collectible over the years.  This one looks great and although it might not be the most amazing piece of mentalism you’ve seen it is easy to do and can be built into something bigger for sure.

There is no memory work and once you read the instructions you’ll be golden. Which is a pretty impressive feat because the original instructions I received were not clear at all how to perform the effect so I had to rewrite them 🙂

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This effect originally called Bloxo, was invented by John Rice and sold by Harry Stanley c. 1960.

Pagoda is the definitive version of the the effect using a solid blade or rod to secure the blocks and was created magnificently by the Dutch master craftsman: Eddy Taytelbaum.  Eddy did such an amazing job he inspired many craftsmen including: Alan Warner, Mel Babock, Milson-Worth and more recently Magic Wagon to create their own versions.

However, one feature that Marvillo invented is the ability to let the chosen blocks release one at a time as chosen by the spectator.  This might be possible with some of the other versions once you know what to do but not with most, and Marvillo specifically designed his box to permit it.  This box is a little chunky when compared to the fine lines of Eddy Taytelbaum and Alan Warner, but still looks good and works very well.

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Another great close-up item from the German Magic Craftsman: Thomas Pohle.  This is based on Hoffman’s Obedient Ball as featured in Professor Hoffman’s Modern Magic.  Though this effect is of Japanese origin and is sometimes known as the Japanese Ball. The most popular version of this effect is Tenyo’s Cubio.  Colin Rose created a very nice version that is shown here.

One feature with Thomas’ version is that the cubes can be set live in front of the audience so that everything can 100% be examined. This same feature was also present in Brema’s Triple Mystery Cube c. 1932 and later in Carl’s son William Brema’s Cubio c.1946. Thomas’ version takes a little knack to be able to set these blocks so that they can stop and start on demand.  Doing this live in front of the audience might be tricky, or at least I found it so.

One approach is to set both blocks before you begin.  Then have then select either block at first and show the stop and start with that block.  Then release it and hand it to the spectator to do the same thing.  They can’t of course. Then you still have the second block ready to go to do the do as I do.

Of course with practice you will be able to hook up live with ease, but I found that some trial and error is required at first.

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This Ring Box works well and is quite clever.  However, it has two main flaws for simply vanishing a ring:

• The box is quite large. If you compare it with Sans Minds’ Vanishing Ring (see last two photos), you’ll see how much bigger it is.
• You cannot retrieve the ring secretly from the bottom.  So you vanish the ring – how do you extract it?

That being said as a result of these issues it can be used to vanish AND appear rings and small items which might be what you are looking for.  I can see it being useful if you want to make a ring appear inside the box. You can also do this repeatedly should you want some sort of running gag, but I’m think it would become less convincing if repeated.

The box does work well and the mechanism seems solid and reliable.  But I would not get this if you mainly want to vanish a ring – I would use Sans Minds Vanishing Ring hands down for that.

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