4 Stars

The best Rainbow Deck?

Most rainbow decks are made up of a collection of random cards from real decks. Sometimes the colors are wrong, they don’t have borders, they don’t fan smoothly, or they are not all precisely cut to the same size.

This deck is different: it was specially printed to have different backs from the outset. Very well produced and useful for many different card effects if you use your imagination.

The only possible issue I have with it is that some of the designs don’t really look like card backs at all – just 52 almost random images. Not sure if this is really an issue, but if I was to show you some of the designs you would not think it was a card back. Again this might not really be an issue, just a thought.

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What a Great "Natural" Rainbow Deck

Most rainbow decks are made up of a collection of random cards from real decks. Sometimes the colors are wrong, they don’t shuffle smoothly, they don’t fan smoothly, or they are not all precisely cut to the same size.

This deck has been created with cards from The United States Playing Card Company (mostly Bicycle), and the size of the cards are all the same – no long or short cards. So you can shuffle them fine. The faces also look like they come from the same deck. If The USPC made there own custom Rainbow deck it would be better, but not by much. I actually prefer this deck to Randy Wakeman’s Rainbow II deck because it looks more like a real deck.

The only issue I found with this deck was that there were 5 cards without borders – not a big deal for most effects, but if you needed a trick with 100% borders this deck would need to have a few cards removed or switched out.

If you’re looking for a rainbow deck, then this would be the one to purchase!

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Amazing Trick but Cheap Cards!

This is a very clever and convincing effect invented by Dr. Spencer P. Thornton and marketed by Ed Mellon. The props are simple and the revelation quite amazing. However, the cards supplied with this effect are cheap quality and stick together easily. If you want to do this more than once, and I think you will, you’d be wise to invest in some better quality cards.

But regardless of the quality of the cards the effect is quite stunning. You show a deck of alphabet cards that are clearly different and pick 4 that you place in a stand. The audience member now removes any 5 cards from the deck. From these 5 he freely discards any 1 and arranges the 4 that remain in any order to form a word. Amazingly enough when you reveal your previously chosen letters not only do they match the spectator’s but you are also spelling out the same word.

There are no moves and it looks like genuine mentalism. This would be a 5 star effect, but the cards reduced it by one. Contrary to the Ad Copy these are not, in my opinion, printed on heavy card stock.

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Great Rotuines, Nice Wallet

The best part of Gregory Wilson’s Stockholder is surely the huge book of routines that it comes with. The Stockholder Wallet is certainly nice, but I don’t know if it is as practical as something as simple as Doc Eason’s Out To Dinner. Either way there is no better way to breath life into the old Out To Lunch principle.

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Amazing puzzle from Masuda

Masuda creates some wonderful effects. I’m not sure you would perform them all to lay people but they are still very clever all the same. This effect is truly a mistifying puzzle and looks exactly as it says.

You start off with an empty blue case and a criss-crossed red case where a blue deck is running through a red case. You pull out the blue cards and freely show and shuffle the cards they all are complete with no holes. These cards are placed into the blue case and fill the case. Now you notice that there is still a full deck in the red case – this time they are red and you pull them out, freely show and shuffle them. When they are returned to the red case they are also shown to fill the deck.

Where the heck did the red deck come from? It was in the X-Zone all along!

Very easy to do, nothing is added or taken away, and you are ready to fool the heck out of them!

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Very Clean, but harder than it looks!

If you watch the video for this it looks incredibly clean. There is one envelope sticking out of the wallet and the spectator can choose any of the 5 ESP symbols, and when the envelope is handed to the spectator it clearly has one card only in it, and it is their chosen card. It can be this clean for sure – the method is clever and the props are well built.

However, I have found to perform this as flawlessly as the video it requires hours of practice. For me the envelope sticks easily in the wallet and when it does come out you have to be sure that the gimmick does not show up. The reset is fairly easy but I have found that the whole gimmick needs to be reset each time, it is not just a matter of slipping one card back and you are all set to go. For this reason, I would not recommend it for walk around situations. It is best suited to the one off as shown in the video demo.

I really like Masuda’s magic, but this one I found to be not as practical or as easy as it looked. It could be me, but I spent a lot longer practicing this than normal and still found it difficult to make it flawless everytime.

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