Crack the Seal

Here’s a quick tip that has had a fairly significant impact on the ease with which performing opportunities have arisen when people visit my home.

Like many of you, I have a somewhat significant number of decks of cards on display in my house. I’m not a true fanatic about it, but I’ll generally have somewhere around 50-60 decks of cards out. (I use these displays. They have a small footprint, hold 40 decks, and are pretty cheap.)

A couple months ago I was looking at some of my collection. About 75% of those decks were sealed. And that got me wondering… Why? Did I buy these decks as an investment? No. I bought them because I liked the look of the deck. And the purpose of having a collection (for me) is to draw people in and get them looking over the cards in a way they wouldn’t be if I just had a couple Bicycle decks on my end table.

So I decided to open all the decks of cards. I wanted the display to say, “These are things to be interacted with. Not just to be looked at.”

Since doing so, people have been so much more likely to take a deck down that interests them, open the case, and pull the cards out. It’s clear to the people who visit that I’m not trying to keep them “pristine” so I can make a $12 profit a decade down the line. And, of course, once someone takes down a deck that interests them, it couldn’t be easier to transition into a trick.

Even if they don’t take down a deck themselves, being able to say, “Hey, I want to show you something. Grab a deck for me and one for you from that shelf over there,” and giving them the freedom to choose anything they want is a more interesting moment than having them choose from a few open decks.

Of course, this is all predicated on the fact that my priority is to make transitioning into a trick as easy as possible. That’s really why I have a deck collection in the first place. I want people to want to touch and engage with the cards. If your deck collection is intended to be an investment, then you certainly wouldn’t want to do this. But let’s be honest, you’re not going to sell that collection. It’s just going to get dumped in the garbage by your loved ones when you die. Open ‘em up.