Tag: Andy Martin

The amazing Dutch FISM 1958 Grand Prix winner Tonny Van Dommelen created one of the most overlooked close-up miracles ever when in 1965 he started selling his wonderful close-up routine: Dizzy Dominoes.  There have been many versions sold by dealers since then, but the best set by a mile was this beautiful set from Victor & Marcelo Contento.  These were produced in 1992 and have been off the market for about twenty years.  Victor & Marcelo had a custom set of professional grade Dominoes created by a real Domino manufacturer and nothing else has ever come close.  To top it off they added an extra gimmick, not in the original Dizzy Dominoes, and came up with four routines from Bob Farmer, Kirk Charles and Marcelo Contento calling the new set: Crazy Dominoes.

You can do everything that you could do with the original Dizzy Dominoes, with dominoes transposing under seemingly impossible conditions, and what’s more everything can be left for examination!  In addition, Kirk Charles offers a routine based on a Monte theme and Bob Farmer describes a swindle which will allow you to fleece your friends and neighbors.

These are a beautiful set, clean, effective, straight to the point magic and easy to do!  What is more they perfectly match the other Domino miracle put out by Victor & Marcelo by Kirk Charles: Nostradominus.

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A beautiful set of dominoes were custom created for Victor and Marcelo Contento by a real Domino manufacturer in 1998 to showcase this effect by Kirk Charles.  A standard set of dominoes is displayed and a prediction is made.  The dominoes are placed into the velvet bag, shaken and spilled on the table.  All the face down dominoes are removed.  The remaining face up dominoes are collected, placed in the bag and the process is repeated until just one domino remains – it always matches the prediction – which can be different for repeat performances.

I love this easy to do effect and it has been unavailable for almost twenty years and these dominoes will last a lifetime.  They also match the other domino effect put out by Victor and Marcelo: Crazy Dominoes.

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If you are unlucky enough to be the wife of a magician you’re going to be forced to watch a lot of magic during your lifetime and most of the time you will not be amazed, amused or even entertained. In fact, in our home we have a phrase: “bile rising” and often just the thought of seeing another magic trick triggers the BR response. So imagine my joy when I showed this card trick to my wife – and she smiled, laughed, loved it and was amazed too. When your long suffering wife enjoys an effect you know you are onto a winner.

What I love about this effect is that it is simple to understand and direct to perform, and apart from having the card chosen and returned to the deck the spectator does all the handling and counting of the cards. The Computer Deck animations and sounds created by the amazing Bill Spooner are striking and precisely what you would imagine a real computer deck would look like. Bill has clearly thought through the creation of this wonderful deck and it shows. The circuit board is professionally engineered and works perfectly. Even the rechargeable battery can be replaced unlike so many other devices I’ve had over the years, but the battery seems to last for a very long time anyway.

The unit comes with printed and video instructions, which is so useful and rare these days and Bill goes into some detail about the performance and maintenance of the effect.

I have included a quick demo video just to show you the basic routine and I plan working on this and getting it out on the road this holiday season so hopefully I’ll get some live reactions captured, but based on my wife’s I am confident this is a real winner.

The effect is easy to do and I made one simple change to the routine to avoid any real delays or skill when setting up the deck. You only need to be able to control their chosen card to the top and the rest is simple and Bill provides two different methods. In the demo the card appears at position 8 in the deck, but the computer can be set to show any number between 00 and 31 which is perfect for repeat performances.

I rarely buy electronic magic these days, no matter how well made it is because sooner or later it will fail, but the impact of the leds and sounds this deck makes is so strong it is worth it, and I am confident I will have many years of use out of this item.

Highly Recommended for Performers who like to Entertain and Amaze everywhere.

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What a clever and clean take on Jack Hughes’ Card Go premise. This really is a surprise beauty built by Alan Wright for Supreme Magic in 1975 based on one of the earliest ideas from The Great Norman.

It consists of an attractive anodised metal display stand in which a signed playing card is placed and easily seen by the audience. It is covered with a handkerchief and handed to a spectator to hold. The balance of the desk is gathered up, wrapped with a rubber band and given to another spectator.

On command the spectator removes the handkerchief and the card has vanished, only to be found back in the deck the other spectator is holding.

This is a beautifully self-contained device that you’ll love playing with and I haven’t seen another like it.

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Wow Kent’s 3D magic line is growing in leaps and bounds. The latest two items I have received are really raising the bar as what to expect from 3D printed magic today. I don’t think any of the other 3D printed items I have seen get close to the quality and effort that Kent is putting into them. If I didn’t know better Kent is trying to make you forget you even want real wooden items, whereas many other creators are just using 3D printers to get items out quicker.

What I continue to marvel at is how much thought goes into the size and shape of every piece. Kent thinks through his treasures both from a Collector’s standpoint with items sitting pretty on the shelf and a performers standpoint actually carrying and presenting the effects.

The effect for this item is clean and straightforward. You show the spectator an all white mummy resting in the sarcophagus. Then they get to choose one of six colored chips in a fair way and that chip is placed on top of the sarcophagus, which when opened now displays a mummy of the chosen color.

What is even better is that for repeat performances the mummy and chip chosen can be any one of six different colors. Although this is not a trick you could repeat to the same audience immediately.

If you are already on board with Kent’s 3D Magic Works you’ll love this and if not, this would be a perfect place to start.

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Kent Bergmann is taking 3D Printers to the next level and and raising our expectations of what 3D Magic should look like. His recent effects have just been amazing. I can’t imagine how much work and how long it takes for these bad boys to be printed, but I’m sure if you were to travel to Kent’s workshop you would hear the printers cranking away 24 hours a day.

This item is Kent’s version of the old Don Potts classic effect: The Mystery of The Pyramids that was put out by U.F. Grant in 1965. A few craftsman have created their own versions each with their own twists. But what I really like about Kent’s version is that it seems to be the first one that has a really good story line that makes the props make some sense. The effect and story is just part one of a Trilogy which should get most collectors excited. I would even say that the story was so much fun that I’m looking forward to the next installment in the trilogy. Maybe not Game of Thrones, but it is a magic trick after all 🙂

This is another amazing effect from Kent that you cannot miss out on. It works very smoothly and looks great and is very solidly made.

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Recently I have become addicted to Chris Wasshuber’s phenomenal contribution to magic in the form of his vast library of magic books in electronic form at the amazing Lybrary.com. I keep finding periodicals and out of print books that I either had once and have sold or never owned. I use these ebooks primarily for research to find out about old magic items and performers, but invariably every time I open an issue I get sucked down some rabbit hole to read about some wonderful effect or magician from the past.

The price of these ebooks is so reasonable there is no excuse to not have copies of all your favorite books and periodicals. Although I warn you once you start you might find it hard to stop, and before you know it will need more disk space! That being said Chris has made all the right decisions when offering his service with PDF’s as the primary ebook format, unlimited downloads and a list of all the ebooks you have ever purchased available on your own Digital Shelf. Chris has even added a useful Magic Knowledge Base Search that allows you to instantly search all of the ebooks you have purchased from him.

Lybrary.com might look a little outdated, which I believe even Chris would admit too, but this is one example where you can’t judge the book by the cover, because there is simply nothing else like this on the web today. Most of the ebooks that Chris is offering are not available elsewhere and the contents is certainly not available on Google.

Thank-you Chris for providing such a wonderful resource for us all, I’ll be back many more times. And although I have not mentioned the Sphinx once so far, you can read plenty about The Sphinx here.

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80+ years and still going strong – wow what an achievement! And Chris Wasshuber with the assistance of Richard Kaufman, of course, provides such easy access to it all. Read more about Lybrary.com here and Genii here. Hard to put into words how useful and amazing having all of these resources available at the touch of a button is.

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This is the pocket-sized version of Buma’s popular shamanistic effect: Ju Ju Man. I think the smaller size makes this more practical and easier to do too.

With reset in seconds, nothing to replace or wear out, and fully self contained this item is perfect for walk-around and table hopping situations. The little men are adorable and intriguing to lay people and this could be the perfect non-card effect you have been looking for.

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Another beauty from Magic Wagon using five really elegant mummies that the spectator can freely choose from and place secretly inside the beautiful and intricate sarcophagus. Regardless of which one they choose the performer can always divine which one it is.

And better still the performer touches nothing, there are no electronics, always ready to work with zero reset, and completely self-contained.

Is it just me or are Magic Wagon actually getting better over time? You’ll love this one!

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