Nice Brass Chips and Clean Prediction!
This effect is a clean prediction of any one of 5 colors. It’s not new as I’ve seen the principle used in other effects, but the chips are nicely made and it also comes with a presentation to perform it twice in one setting which does add a good twist to the routine.
If you like brass magic with no sleight of hand and a simple plot then this is a well priced effect for you!
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Simple Method and Convincing.
This is a simple nut off bolt effect with a different method than others I’ve seen. It is kind of sneaky, but this is so often the case with magic that works well. Reset is a snap too!
Unlke other effects that I have seen like this, the bolt is not gimmicked and can be examined until the cows come home at the end of the effect. There is a gimmick, but it is probably not what you are expecting.
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Finally a Thumb Tip that fits!
For 20+ years I have tried to find a thumb tip that looks half way real and actually fits my thumb comfortably. Until this custom one from Keith Arlen Lack came out I was unable to find one.
This expensive Thumb Tip (probably not expensive when you factor in the work required to create it, but for a thumb tip $100 is clearly right up there!) fits perfectly and comes off easily too. That has always been my problem, I’ve managed to get the tip on, but it was always a struggle to get it off.
It also looks very good. My one is more pink that I would like, but I am working with Keith to get it closer to my color. Keith is very dedicated to his magic so I have no doubt we’ll get the color perfect too. It’s not even that big a deal, but it would be nice.
Should you buy one? If you have problems finding a thumb tip that fits then for sure order one now! However, if you have no problems with the hundreds of tips out there, then I’m not sure. There are good thumb tips available that look real close, and it is hard to justify the extra expense. But for me I have tried so many and none of them come close to fitting as well as this beauty does.
Why only 4 stars? Well just because it is the most expensive thumb tip by far that I have ever seen!
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Clever effect, Good Value, and Easy to do.
This is a clever little self working effect. The price is right and you get a lot for your money: specially printed cards, purse, stage money, and routine.
However, I think it would be better without the specially printed cards – it would be much better if you pulled out a deck of cards and just wrote on the back of them the numbers – or affixed them with labels. I think that way it would seem even more amazing. In fact if you pulled out a deck, did some false shuffles and cuts, then dealt out 16 cards on top of the numbered cards (or numbered them as you laid them out), you really would have a miracle!
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Keep it clean or else!
I have this trick but mine is painted red. It looks a little more Chinese than this one. Mine also has an automatic silk winder in the back and the clockwork mechanism will pull the silk through the glass unattended. You must be near the mirror when it starts to wind the silk on the mechanism and also before the silk disappears else you’ll see the secret.
But the biggest complaint with this product is keep it clean. One person was performing this trick and had some pretty big prints on the glass and the audience could see the gimmick moving. In fact, one loud mouthed kid was reported to say: "Look Daddy, the fingerprints are moving!" which brought a chuckle from the audience and killed the magic for the trick.
So keep the glass clean. That’s what the silk is for, to polish the glass!
MagicBill
www.high-techmagic.com
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Good effect if you do Fire Magic
McBride’s Candle is a good effect for performers that want flashy fire magic at a (relatively) low price. If you look hard enough in this photo, you can see the drawback with this candle. It is strictly stage or maybe parlor magic. Close inspection will give it away unless you keep it moving…
McBride’s Candle is unique in the way it lights and then can keep going far longer than just a butane lighter could go. McBride solved a lot of problems with other designs and this candle plays big and packs small. Add it to your bag of tricks…
MagicBill
www.high-techmagic.com
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The most versatile gaffed coin set
The Hopping Half is the most versatile coin set one can buy, especially for someone coming aboard coin magic for the first time. The gaffs can be used individually for other effects as the most important gaffs make up this set.
Johnson Products is still the leader when it comes to commercially produced coin gimmicks. There are others in this business but their quality is questionable. Once you have reached a certain level, you can turn to custom coins by the likes of Todd Lassen using more "exotic" coins for that ultimate presentation..
I have a set I bought over 15 years ago and the qualtity is very good. Johnson also makes this same set using a 1964 Silver Kennedy Half and the Walking Liberty.. the latter set I recently purchased and was very disappointed with the expanded Walker shell. However, I have heard that Johnson Products has exceptional customer service, but I decided to turn to Todd for a replacement.
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Never mind the Quality, feel the width!
Ok, so I’m the first to admit that I am totally not a lover of eBooks. I’m sure they will continue to grow in popularity each year since they have four primary advantages over our beloved hardbound originals: they are cheap, they are easy to search, they take up little room, and they last forever. However for me, I want the real thing. Having all my books in some sort of electronic form would be cool too, but for the most part I just want the books.
In the case of The Sphinx, the eBook advantages are huge. These two DVD’s contain almost 17,000 pages or 50 volumes of some of the most important writings in magic history.To buy a full set of The Sphinx, if you can find one, will cost upwards of $5,000 – and then you run the risk of pages falling apart in your hands. Once you do manage to track down a copy that doesn’t fall apart on you, then you have the task of housing them somewhere – a 3 foot shelf is needed!
So this is one eBook that is really worth owning. Chris Wasshuber and his Lybrary.com takes a lot of heat from the book buying magic community, but he is providing a wonderful service to magicians. Particularly for the large or difficult to find volumes. In many cases he is providing access to books that to all intents and purposes cannot be viewed in any other way. When put in that context you can’t argue with the need for eBooks.
Chris is very helpful and dedicated to his task of preserving magic one book at a time. His books primarily ship in an HTML format and I prefer the Adobe PDF format, and he spent quite a lot of time helping me convert my copy into PDF. This was a long and time consuming process, and I thank Chris for helping me do it. However, I do wish he produced these things in PDF up front. I believe that the PDF format and Acrobat is a much better technology and portable platform for eBooks than HTML. Chris has is reasons for using HTML and I’m sure they are fine. But for me PDF is much better, and will continue to get better over time since ADOBE will continue to invest huge resources in it.
This then is my one criticism of the eBook phenomena – it is still early days and the media, software and hardware to view them is still changing. It is not a high-tech, high-gloss world, and particularly in the case of these facsimile versions, where the text itself is not converted, being able to sit down and read them on your computer is not as easy as it could be. You’ll find yourself resizing pages and trying to find the optimum reading set-up.
The Sphinx eBook does come with an impressive index and table of contents which is searchable. If you want to find articles about John Northern Hilliard type it in and 12 articles come back. Of course if you type in John Hilliard nothing comes back which shows up one of the issues with the technology.
I would like to give this 5 stars for time and effort that Chris has put into this. Unfortunately, I believe that as an eBook it could be better and I urge Chris to reconsider using PDF as a medium for his books, and let ADOBE do the development whilst he focuses on finding and converting the books.
Regardless of the technology limitations, this is still a very impressive effort and as a research aid it is invaluable. Just be prepared for the road to be a bit rockier than you might expect. As they say on the old maps: Here there be Dragons …
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Very nice Color Cube!
Sometimes the old and simple effects are the best. This version of the Color Cube by George Robinson is wonderful. In fact, I’ve been trying to think of a routine with two of them so that I can justify buying another!
The size of this is bigger than the kids toy version which lends itself to some very real miracles. The box is Asian mahogany with a hand-rubbed finish and even the cube is hand-crafted with inset acrylic spots, so it can be seen quite easily for close-up and parlor work.
Time to revive this old chestnut, with some imagination! If you spend half of the effort and time that George put into making this, I’m sure you’ll have a very pleasant experience.
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Clean and Convincing, but practice required.
This is a very clean prediction effect. Performed well, it is hard to beat for cleanness in fact.
It has shades of Ultissimo in its method – but without the stand or extra deck, which is a big difference! To do it effectively a sleight is required (the Cull). This is a fairly standard sleight, but if you buy packet tricks and gaffed decks because you don’t like doing any sleights then this might not be for you. It does come with an alternate method that requires less sleight of hand, but it is not as strong.
I can think of at least one way that all sleights could be removed, and to the lay person I’m not convinced they would notice any difference in the effect.
Having said all this the Cull is a very useful one if you don’t already know it, and if you can just break your rules once you will not only have a hugely clean prediction, you will also have a great sleight that you will be able to use for all sorts of things.
As much as the purists like to keep all gaffed cards out of their lives, and the gaffers like to keep all sleights out their lives, sometimes a beautiful mystery comes from the combination of both worlds.
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