Dustings #118

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There are two weeks until Black Friday, which means, if you can help it, you shouldn’t buy anything magic-related for the time being. Even if something you want isn’t discounted for a Black Friday sale, many companies, like Penguin, have reward tiers where you get free stuff if you spend a certain amount. So save your purchases for then.

Currently, the shops are all doing the Murphys-backed liquidation of stuff they have excess stock of. I’m not generally seduced by this sort of thing. If I didn’t want something at $40, I’m probably not going to want it at $33.75. I don’t recommend buying anything just for curiosity’s sake unless you can get it at least 50% off.

And don’t think you’re getting a deal just because you see it listed in their Black Friday sale, as this listing from Vanishing Inc shows.

For the magic companies, if your sale is not at least 25% off, that doesn’t qualify as a Black Friday sale. And I only start getting particularly interested when it gets to at least 40%. A 15% sale is the sort of thing you see all year round. That’s not going to get anybody’s pussy wet.

Speaking of things that get pussies wet. The Black Ding-Dong is on sale.

When it comes to card tricks, the solutions laypeople have at their fingertips are:

  • Sleight-of-hand

  • “Trick” cards

  • Some kind of mathematical trick

Therefore, if you do a trick with a borrowed deck, where you don’t handle the cards much (or, at least, you handle the cards very fairly), and there’s not a lot of counting or numbers involved—you should have something that feels nearly inexplicable ton non-magicians.

These tricks aren’t always easy to find. I’ve started a new hunt for them myself. I will keep you posted.

I’ve been on a Big Blind Media kick over the past few months as I revisit some of their DVD collections of card magic.

As I was tooling around their site, I noticed they have a little sampler of free downloads you might want to check out.

See here.

I haven’t gone through them myself to be able to recommend any ones to you specifically. But, I mean, it’s free.

Simple Truths

The strength of a visual magic trick is inversely proportional to the number of cuts in its demo video.