(Part 2) Best products from r/Magic

Not in any particular order, but any of these would be perfect for your young 10 year old aspiring student of magic! None of these will break your bank! :


The Magic Digest by George B. Anderson I picked up a used copy of this book 5 years ago for around 2 dollars. In my opinion, you should acquire a copy for your son for cheap before the prices go up! Don't worry about getting a pristine/good copy, my copy is in "acceptable" condition, but that doesn't take away from the secrets and advice it holds. It's an old book, but it's excellent! It is filled with solid advice for magicians of any age and very solid magic all throughout. It still falls into the realm of a "beginners" book, but I'm definitely not a beginner in magic but was still blown away by its content! Most of the tricks are self working, some use very basic sleight of hand that is also expertly taught in this work. This is truly a book I wish I could have had earlier on in my study! I simply can't recommend this enough!


Big Magic for Little Hands: 25 Outstanding Illusions for Young Magicians by Joshua Jay Despite his young age, the author Joshua Jay is without a doubt one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful students of magic that I've encountered over the years. This book is a fantastic example of why I have this opinion about him! I picked this up a year ago for one of my co-workers kids that loved watching some of the magic I do. I was humbled to have my co-worker tell me that because of me and some of the tricks I taught his father, that she too wanted to learn magic. I was so humbled that I wanted to do her father and her a solid and get them both a quality magic book that was suitable for a 7 year old. I got wind of this and ordered it. After reading half the book over the weekend before handing it to her father the following Monday, I was so inspired and blown away by the content in here that I ordered a copy for myself to study also. The magic and advice in here is that solid and it I don't care if it's targeted at young magicians! I still learned from it! Fantastic!


Magic: The Complete Course by Joshua Jay There is a nice mix of basic sleight of hand and self working tricks in this big book for an outstanding price! The magic taught in here is top notch and this book encompasses many, many areas of magic! Heck, they even tip a way for an aspiring magician to make something like an Invisible Deck, which is considered by many top professionals to be one of the best "special decks", with a common household item. I've tried it myself and it works beautifully in a pinch! This book even comes with a DVD to accompany some of the amazing content in this work!


The Magic Handbook by Peter Eldin This holds a special place in my heart! I believe it was 1988 when my grandmother gifted me this very book when she thought I was "outgrowing" my Fischer Price magic set. This book is outstanding and it's easy to tell that Peter Eldin has a deep love and respect for magic as an artform. There is only a few basic sleights in here, but don't let that scare you or your son. I was 5 when I started learning a lot of this stuff and thanks to the clear illustrations and text, I had very little trouble learning basic card handling from this as well as ways to conceal a coin. One of the highlights for me in this was a very unique handling of a classic coin trick known as "The Miser's Dream". Your son will have the ability to seemingly and continuously produce coins out of thin air and get this...without sleight of hand technique....This version is still a "go to" for me...Need I say more? :D

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Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic This book truly lives up to what the title promises. I would be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive course in magic for 15 bucks! Sponge Balls, Cards, Coins, Mental Magic, Stage Illusions that can be made at home, solid advice from a legend, information that I haven't found elsewhere, among other things! This book will keep both and your son busy for a long, long time! Self Working tricks, basic sleights and tricks to accompany them, great methods, inspirational food thought. I simply wouldn't feel right not recommend this to anyone who loves magic!

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Karl Fulves "Self Working" Series: All of these are dirt cheap and worth any students time and study regardless of age or experience! Collect them all or simply pick a subject that your son favors! This series encompasses mental magic as well as magic with cards, coins, numbers, paper, rope, handkerchiefs, and household objects! Any one of these will serve your son well.

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Scarne on Card Tricks and Scarne's Magic Tricks I would recommend getting both of these together. There are hundreds upon hundreds of quality tricks from some of magic's legends including: Paul Rossini, Dai Vernon and Harry Blackstone to name a few! All these tricks were re-worked by those magicians with the help of John Scarne to eliminate most or all sleight of hand while not sacrificing the clarity of effect! These two books are classics for a reason! Highly recommended!


Lots of recommendations here for sure and yes these are all books, but I'll even recommend a fantastic and entertaining DVD for you and your son!


Amazing Magic and Mentalism Anyone Can Do by Jay Sankey 39 stellar tricks that are as fun to learn as they are to perform. Very basic sleight of hand tricks and even some self working ones taught by one of my favorite teachers, Jay Sankey!


TL;DR: Just click on the links provided. Hope you like what you see! :)

Consider teaching her the French Drop. My belief is that when starting kids off in magic (I was trained 'old-school') the dependence on props should be limited, and a foundation in misdirection and basic sleight of hand should be encouraged.

I learned the French Drop when I was six. I loved that sleight more than any prop I got in the years that followed. It requires no special props, you can do it impromptu with any small object and it teaches kids the value of practice and basic magic principles. Unlike props, the novelty doesn't wear off like it would with a toy, and learning sleight of hand doesn't get much cheaper.

If you wish to really explore magic with your daughter (and I hope you continue to do so!), I'd recommend "Magic for Dummies" by David Pogue. Seriously! It's chock-full of DIY effects with coins, cards and common household items, with submissions from internationally recognized magicians.

There are plenty of people that will tell you to buy this prop, get that prop. I worked at a magic shop for three years and sold countless magic coloring books, plastic wands, ball and vases, etc.-- the kids that stuck with it always developed an interest early on in sleight-of-hand, particularly the younger ones. I suspect this has something to do with the system of learning. With a magic prop, the child learns that by working lever A and flipping lever B, C happens. That's it. With some sort of sleight of hand involved, the child now needs to perform move A but convince the audience that move B is actually taking place so C happens. The difference here is the child's cognitive development-- they are learning to persuade and convince, traits that will serve them well in other areas of life.

In my experience, buying a magic prop for a child will last as long as the child takes to learn how to work said prop. It quickly devolves into a single-action toy. The reward just isn't there.

Finally, I'd suggest the cups and balls. You can start off with a homemade set (plastic cups, napkin/paper balls) and work on the basic routine. But the great thing is that as she learns the fundamental moves and principles and what not, she'll learn to improvise magic tricks for audiences, and that's where the real fun is. You can spend time with her using your imaginations to 'create' new effects, since one of the downsides to the cups and balls is that it's not 100% impromptu. The idea is to help foster her view of magic outside of just pre-packaged props, so she sees the kind of value that can be created if she thinks outside the box.

As she grows, if she decides to stick with the art, the cups and balls can grow with her instead of being left behind like most kids' magic props. There are many intermediate and advanced cups and balls routines that will challenge her. The routines she can come up with will be expanded with each sleight she learns and will make it easier for her to learn other types of magic. Michael Ammar is a wonderful teacher (and extremely kind man as well). You can even reward her practice efforts by going from set to set to
set as she improves if you wish.

I hope you found this helpful!

Scott's tome is an interesting historical event unto itself, but I don't think it's that instructive in any greater capacity. Milbourne Christopher's history is good for breadth, but not as much for depth. Everything by Jim Steinmeyer is probably a good idea.

If you're writing about women in magic, some more detailed biographical work is probably in order. Bill Kalush's Houdini book doesn't say much about Bess, but I think that a lot can be learned by reading between the lines. It's also very informative about the "Golden Age" boys club and the feud between magicians and spiritualists.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Houdini-Americas-Superhero/dp/0743272080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313429451&sr=8-1

On the same subject, the David Abbott books by Todd Karr and Teller are amazing. Abbott's wife helped a lot with the act, and the first book gives a lot of details about the development of magic and spiritualism in the US:

http://miraclefactory.net/zenstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=75

The Karr/Teller Germain books are also good, but not as interesting with regard to women and apparently out of print.

Our Magic, by Maskelyne and Devant, is one of the most influential books ever written on the way that magicians see themselves. Like Scott it isn't a historical analysis or overview, it's a historical document. There will be a whole lot in here that will help you represent magicians convincingly. Lybrary.com has a cheap pdf version if you don't have a kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Magic-ebook/dp/B004Z8L26Y/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1313429822&sr=8-4

Houdin's instructional books and memoirs are also held in high regard by magicians, and also give a lot of information about their own particular historical context:

http://www.amazon.com/Conjurers-Confessions-M-Robert-Houdin/dp/1425017150/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313429966&sr=1-1

I think a lot of knowledge about magic history still hasn't really been culled out of the books of tricks. In particular, the recent history (say 1940 to present) hasn't seen much analysis in print. If you want a historical view on that timespan, it's probably more efficient to consult a magician– or a few.

If you have specific questions feel free to message me and I'll give you an email; women and magic is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. If not, I think that most of the books mentioned previously and all of the ones I've linked are very good. In particular, the Karr/Teller volumes are incredibly valuable for the depth of historical knowledge that they contain. The Kalush book is a no-brainer because of how easy it is to get and how rigorously researched it is.

Hopefully that helps somewhat.

So personally I think all patter for magic is boring. Literally all of it. Also, procedure is inherently boring. The points that are really important, in the mind of the spectator, are the initial conditions, (How the card was chosen and how the card was lost) and the final conditions, (how the card was found). Everything else is kinda in the background. If they wanted a good story, they'd be rewatching Bojack Horseman for the 20th time. They're watching a card trick, so the important parts they're paying attention to are those 3 things. When you start with a monologue, it's boring because we're waiting for the card trick to begin. We know it's coming so we're not really paying attention to the story. Then after the card is lost, we're kinda suspended between being curious about the previous moment (was the card really lost) and watching to see the final moment (how the card is found). This tension is what magic is better than any medium at.

So you're performing at a very even pace, and evenly emotive. Think of pacing as a push and pull. You can speed up or you can slow down. Speeding up can help cover boring, but necessary things, like patter and procedure, while slowing down can stretch the important moments to make those 'wow' moments the focus of the trick.

This trick relies on the building anticipation, but each reaction is the same. Your goal of this trick is to determine from the way they say, "that's it" whether it really is. You are a lie detector, but how are you figuring out s/he's lying? A mentalist would read body language, or read their mind, or whatever, a clown would use increasingly preposterous means like staring into someone else's eyes to read their mind or genuinely try and fail despite the method being obvious (jumbo card in a normal deck) and a gambler would look for tells, which I guess is pretty much just body language.

Anyways, these moments are great character moments. The way you choose to execute the trick is totally up to you. The trick itself is just a framework. I believe all art is just communication. What are you trying to communicate the audience? This is who you are, why you are here...let it be you. The more clearly you define the character you are trying to convey the easier it'll be to create material. The secret to defining your character isn't the costume you where or the props you use. It's the small moments surrounding the card trick. No one cares about the card trick, they care about you. How do you react to the card being wrong at the finale (before the big surprise)? That's the moment everything is building up to. You're the one on stage, so how do you choose to react? That's what's important in performing, and the more you focus on making that part interesting, the more fun you'll have performing and the more successful you'll be.

Screenwriting books can be helpful in understanding tension and storytelling. My favorite was Into the Woods. Acting books are great for performing in general. I'd really recommend taking acting classes, or improv is great too. Stella Adler's The Art of Acting was my favorite so far for acting.

This one is good, they are pretty much all the same, and when in doubt, go with the Dover paperbacks. Those are pretty standard. I've seen people with this copy before though, and it's a hardback for 7 bucks!

Card Tricks: The Royal Road to Card Magic https://www.amazon.com/dp/1944686274/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_iWd2CbC23YS9N

Additionally I really really recommend the Card College series. Also Expert Card Technique and Expert at the Card Table. Those books and Royal Road are pretty much all the fundamentals of card magic. But you don't need them all at once (or even all of them) to be a well versed card magician! Royal Road is such a great start. For effects I recommend Karl Fulve's Self Working Card Tricks, Card College Light, and the old L&L Publishing VHS's of Ammar's Card Magic Made Easy, which you can get digitally at L&L , especially around holiday sales etc.

ALSO I dont want to discourage you from practicing the DPS, the Bow to Stern, or anything else. Learn what you want!! I love both those moves and there isnt a rule saying you can't do them until you've learned X, ya know? But I only mean this as a recommendation to develop a more full bodied skill set, with great lessons on routining etc baked in.

Cheers!

01: Trade up feature - Both initial cameras come in under budget. The $40 difference isn't drastic.

02: Battery - This is the only real issue I'd compare. A single charge lasts about 2 hours for the GoPro and the DJI Pocket. That's 2 hours of pure record time. When I carry mine around I'm recording in 30 second or 5 min chunks. It lasts all day. Are you ever really going to record a 2 hour show or a 20 min show six times in one day without time to recharge? You can always buy the charging case later if you feel like it's not lasting long enough.

03: 120 fps vs 240 fps seems like an issue, but it's something you'll never really use and 120 is plenty for slow motion. 240 needs a ton of light and 1 second record equals 10 seconds playback. It's a feature that you'll play with a few times then only use for an artistic intro to your videos. The average user wouldn't be able to tell any difference between a card trick done at 120 or 240 and for evaluating yourself 120 is fine. You'd never want record an entire show in 120 or 240... just a quick move or two. Everything else would be at 24fps anyway.

04: This type of bundle is $359 and comes with everything you'd need to mount it to anything plus an SD card and case. You can find the bundle right for you on Amazon for well under $700.


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Some additional things to think about:

Dealing with warped GoPro footage is problematic unless you know what you're doing in post-production and you have to do it to every shot every time. Plus I never use the audio from my GoPros. It's always very windy and creaky due to the nature of the camera use.

Either way you'll have to buy accessories and mounting stuff. It's not like the base GoPro comes with anything drastically different out of box.

This is their exact GoPro competitor. I've never used it, but I think functionality-wise the pocket is better for your needs.

Both cameras have amazing footage but the GoPro has "GoPro-looking footage". It stands out like crazy everytime you see it. Watch the barrel scene from The Hobbit. The DJI could be integrated into anything and feel like just part of the normal shoot.

I know when shopping for tech it's easy to get bogged down in the numbers, but out of the two I definitely recommend DJI Pocket. Many of these concerns are similar to buying an Xbox or a Playstation and only paying attention to the graphics card. Buy for what you WILL do with it, not for the very top performance potential that will never actually be utilized.

But... if you want the most versatile/highest quality camera for the money... get an iPhone X.

The best camera is the one you have on you when you need it.

As u/hardhitter007 said, my first go-to for a beginner for both cards and coins would be Now You See It ... Now You Don't! by Bill Tarr. Easy material, beautifully illustrated, but hard-hitting enough that you can make a professional career out of it.

Bobo is also great for coins (though easy-as-pie tricks will be on the same page as serious knuckle-busters ... the book is mostly arranged by category). The illustrations can be cryptic. Bobo also covers various gimmicks and gaffs, which you don't currently want, but a great deal of pure sleight of hand with borrowed coins is also right there for you.

For cards, as u/theburnabykid said, Hugard and Braue's Royal Road to Card Magic is the classic go-to. These are all ungaffed, ungimmicked card tricks. (Some do require setups of various kinds.) Royal Road is public domain, and so is available in a wide variety of formats and price points, right the way down to free.

If you want to go the video route, there are DVD companions for Royal Road and Bobo.

More on the video front: Michael Ammar's Easy to Master series is outstanding.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Card-Magic-Volume-Course/dp/B000JPG96A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407229541&sr=8-1&keywords=Complete+Card+Magic

I recently purchased this. An absolute steal for the price. Yes, some of the tricks / moves are incorrectly named (which is down to poor editing IIRC) but Gerry Griffin is a fantastic teacher and it starts out with very basic, easy to do effects and moves up to some very strong stuff. It also has a fantastic section on sleights, cuts and shuffles which is a good visual companion to Royal Road.

Pick up this book Use your creative juices and fatherly wit to come up with obnoxious puns to go along with what you learn and you are set my friend.

I recommend this to people starting out in magic. It will teach you the basics of sleight of hand. Some things are outdated or inappropriate to show kids like a section on cigarette magic. But you can learn how to thumb palm a cigarette and apply that to a similar shaped object like a crayon.

If you've only just started you probably want something thats self-working. The single best self-working card trick ever is without a doubt 'Out Of This World' by Paul Curry.

If you don't mind spending a few bucks then I highly recommend that you pick up Karl Fulve's Self-Working Card Tricks. It's filled with stuff you can do more or less as soon as you've read it. Some of the effects are a bit crap but a few of them are brilliant.

After that you want to learn a way to force a card and a way to control a card as it's returned to the deck... then you're off and should check out this thread.

I bought these: Alliance Rubber 42199 #19 Non-Latex Antimicrobial Rubber Bands, 1/4 lb box contains approx. 360 bands (3 1/2" x 1/16", Cyan Blue) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0017TPZNU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_XyiulPoWx6oo6

I believe that is the same brand that Joe buys although I think he had to get a bunch of custom colors then he treats them with the Elastraflex. I actually bought a pack of the treated Rainbow to see if they perform better(plus I wanted more colors), but the blue one work great otherwise.

Its in one of Karl Fulves Self working card trick books (just a couple of $ from amazon):- In fact its this one from $5 on kindle or a couple of $ including shipping for a 2nd hand copy

it's on here...
https://www.amazon.com/Magic-DVD-Set-Complete-Teaches/dp/B000JPG96A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466633337&sr=8-1&keywords=card+magic+dvd

TBH this is a pretty decent DVD for the price. Lots of tricks, as well as lots of basics. I feel it goes well with Royal Road and Card College (books) as a supplement.

I practice with some cheap ones from amazon (that break frequently), and perform with Joe's pricey ones. Here are the cheap ones:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0017TPZNU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

number 19 non-latex rubber bands, 3 1/2 x 1/16 inches