Reviews

A Beautiful Box and Routine!

This chest really is very beautiful and works very well. One of my favorite routines is this:

You distribute 15 different pieces of paper to them – 5 green, 5 yellow and 5 blue (or whatever colors) – and each member writes a question on their piece of paper – one on travel, one on sports, one on politics (or whatever – basically you ask them to ask a question in a topic area based on the color). They all replace them in a box and then another person chooses one piece of paper for each color and then you write the answers BEFORE they ask the questions.

There are many other effects, but I really like this one. The box looks very clean from all angles and its like a suggestion box.

It comes with a big book of instructions and routines with 21 pages from the ever fertile mind of Larry Becker. A great utility prop. Mikame Craft have a box that looks kind of similar and I was at a dealers store recently and looked at it. Although the Mikame Craft box is nice, it is nothing like this box and certainly cannot do the things you do with this one

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This item is a beautifully crafted from natural hard woods by the Italian performer, inventor, and craftsman Mario Andreoli under the Loran Magic banner and distributed by everybody’s favorite collectible magic dealer: Joe Long.

When I first received this wonderful item from Joe I loved the look, the quality of the the materials, and the method but I thought “Here we go more memory work!” 🙁

If only I’d spent five extra minutes to read the instructions I would have realized there is no memory work after all.  Which immediately changed my view from it being just a beautiful item to a beautiful and amazing item 🙂

The method combines elements from Alan Warner’s The Question Is and Andy Nyman’s “Three Skulls on a Spike” (which of course is based upon Tony Curtis’ Die-Abolical originally created c. 1989) but the final effect seems cleaner and fairer than either.

I love this item and I think you will be more than pleased with it.  Hopefully this won’t be the last time we see some fine wooden magic from Loran Magic and Joe Long 🙂

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Here we have another Egyptian styled item from Dietmar Willert, this time Willert has recreated Wolfgang Grosskopf’s amazing Ring Tower.  And what a wonderful job he has done too.  This is the first one I have seen of these and I’m not sure if they ever arrived in the USA via Joe Stevens when he was promoting a few of Dietmar Willert’s other items c. 1990.  On the bottom it shows “1/88”.  This does not mean 1 of 88 made but #1 and the year it was manufactured: 1988.  So this is likely the first one that Mr. Willert made.

The effect is a really wonderful impossible vanish from the clever mind of Wolfgang Grosskopf.  The thing that is interesting about Grosskopf’s original routine is that it is different from how the later ones from Vienna Magic (and others) were described – instead of a ring penetration, this is a ring vanish and reproduction from impossible location.  You could perform either effect but I prefer the presentation where the ring just completely vanishes and is found somewhere else as I think it gives less clues as to what possibly could have happened.

I found a really cool ring appearance that works very well with this.  However, for the routine I show in the video you would need to have a duplicate ring which was not a problem for me, but might be for you.  In which case you would need to use a different method to retrieve the ring such as a RSVP Hero box.

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This is a wonderful idea and looks amazing.

However, the quality of this prop is a little questionable so I don’t know how long it will last, but it actually works well thus far.  The band thickness you can use is also quite limited, it only works with thin bands and I would not want to give the prop to the spectator to open for very long, but in a controlled environment it can be a really amazing effect.

The remote is small and works very well.  Once you have a ring that fits you’ll find this very easy to perform.

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What a clever item from Seventy years ago from Abbott’s!  I’ve never seen seen a Rising Cards like this before and I love it!  The mechanism is very well made and is still working perfectly after seventy years, so I think it will likely last another seventy!

It doesn’t use any of the previously used methods including:

• Swiss Motor
• Watch Motor
• Threads – Wires – Elastics – Catgut – Hairs
• Springs
• Weights
• Sand
• Magnets
• Electronics
• Moving Rollers
• Faked Decks.

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This is the original version of Abbott’s Vampire – it is not my favorite version of the classic effect The Vampire Block.  But as long as you have the correct gimmick it can work very smoothly as the video show.

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This beautiful custom made Checker Cabinet that was originally created for Tommy Kochel and the method is faithfully based on the Okito (Bamberg) Checker Cabinet approach which is quite different from the Owen’s approach used for their Temple of Cambodia.

When I received this, it was anything but smooth or silent, and a little beaten up.  However, with some TLC and some of the amazing Graphite Lubricant from Amazon and some spray paint it not only looks perfect it runs very smoothly now, which I hope the video will demonstrate.

Craig Beytien of Illusion Arts Magic really has built a wonderful looking prop and I spent some time coming up with an interesting patter story and now you have something that will work well for those intimate Halloween parties around the log fire 🙂

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Another wonderfully crafted Vintage Abbott’s recreation from the talented Rocky Clements. This time Rocky has created one of my favorite effects: the Vampire Block.

Last year Rocky Clements made a faithful recreation of Abbott’s Vampire and did a wonderful job.  However, there were a couple of issues I had with the original version and I shared my ideas with Rocky and some of those he has incorporated into this Deluxe version.

The three significant changes he made are:

• The weight of the block has increased from 11.6 oz to 16.8 ozs, that is a 45% increase in weight and it solves what I consider the biggest issue with the original version of Abbott’s Vampire.
• The height of the block is a about 1/2″ taller to aid in the illusion (you can see this difference in the final photo).
• The size of the gimmick is now specified so that you don’t have to guess at what is the correct size any more!  If you know the effect you will immediately know what I am talking about here.

After playing with this version I can safely say Rocky has now created one of the best all around versions of the Vampire Block ever created and I’m pleased to see this beauty on my site.

An amazing recreation and improvement Rocky – great job 🙂

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