Andy Martin

Here is a wonderful collection of low priced “Collector’s” items from the famous Indian producer of magic products Sam Dalal ? Good old Sam the Sham, you can’t keep a good man down.

No one is going to believe these items rival the wood craftsmanship of (in no particular order) Colin Rose, Alan Warner, Kent Bergmann, Owen Magic Supreme, Michael Baker, Paul Lembo, Mel Babcock, Dave Powell, Magic Wagon, Thomas Pohle, Francois Danis, Louis Gaynor, Viking Mfg., to name just a few of the many thousands on this website.

However, if you have a low budget or are used to plastic versions of these items you’ll be more than happy with these wooden miracles from Sam.

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This is Richard Himber’s brilliant “The Big Trick” 🙂  This was initially released with the Topper effect, and was later advertised on its own. It is more startling than Topper which is probably why they did that.

I’ve seen many version’s of the razor blade cutting the deck, and it all started with Richard Himber’s Big Trick.  The quality of this box is something to behold: fine Italian leather, 24k gold dectorating, and solid gleaming chrome.  Looks stunning and beautiful.

The effect is easy to do and the reset takes less about a minute.  I love it 🙂

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I’ve wanted to obtain one of Richard Himber’s Topper card boxes for many years and finally managed to track one down.  It looks beautiful and the two effects that were released with it are perfect:

• Topper
• The Big Trick

The key with this effect is the force has to be clean and so I created a special deck and added the torn corner to really sell the finale.  I don’t think it gets much better than this.

It is easy to do and has a very quick reset.  If you don’t want to tear the corner (which was not originally part of Richard’s effect) then the reset is even simpler, but I think it adds a lot with the torn corner.

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What an absolute beauty this card box is from Bill Adams’ World of Magic. This is one of the very few card boxes I have seen that locks both ways – before the change the box can be examined and after the change too.  In fact you can actually use it multiple times. The craftsmanship on this box is easily as good as Owens Magic.

There are no magnets to get in the way either, with nothing added or taken away.  Pretty much the perfect Card Box.

Notice: It is a good size but will not hold a standard Jumbo card.

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The standard version of this effect was apparently so popular the mini version was released about six months later.  When I first saw this version I thought it was the mini version until I received it and noticed it weighed twice as much as the standard version.  So this is not the “Mini” version.  Internally it is quite a lot more complex than the original version released by Tannen’s too.  So I don’t know if this was later released by Tannen’s or in fact a different manufacturer.  I am assuming it was created by a different manufacturer.

The one improvement on this version is you can cleanly slowly the back of the prop without any thumbs.  However, this also means that you actually have to touch the box to discover what the choices were.

Although this appears to be a copy of the Tannen’s version (which itself is inspired by Ed Mellon’s Quantimental) it could in fact have been released earlier.

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This clever effect is sadly not new with Tannen’s 🙁

The same basic method was actually created ten years earlier by Ed Mellon and engineered by James Swoger as Quantimental. In fact Quantimental is easier to set, more flexible, quieter, and has more choices.

However, even if Divining Rods is not as good as the original it is still a great prop and will certainly fool the average person. As we saw with the Jewels of Shah Jahan the problem with these clever devices that allow us to determine what the spectators have chosen is how to reveal them.  I thought about a simple routine which I hope will come over in my Speed Demo 🙂

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This is a very clever and easy to perform chip transposition created by Ken Kurita that uses a unique method without shells or magnets.

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This effect was first known as The Mystery of Mysteries and was created c. 1880 by Martinka in the USA and Zauber-Klingl in Europe.  It was made popular by the versions manufactured by West German manufacturer Zaubertechnik Haug (often know as ZT Haug) and Mephisto-Huis.

Bali Magic Woodworks make some good wooden items, and their items look great on the web. But once delivered they sometimes fall a little short of the effects they are copying – at least in the two items I’ve seen from them. When this box arrived it was literally impossible to use it. I spent about an hour sanding and cleaning things up and now it works perfectly. For a 60+ year old product this would be a little more acceptable, but for a brand new item this should not be the case.

Also the latch on the smaller box really should be smaller or at least without a top lip.  This is purely aesthetic, but it bothered me and with a little attention could have been avoided.  When it comes to these more collectible items, attention to detail really does matter 🙂

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Larry Becker created the first Chameleon Chest released by Larry and Viking. However, the Mighty Mini manufactured by Magic Wagon with the help of Tony Curtis is breathtaking!

The box is small, silent, very solid and beautiful to behold. The original one is still fine, but unless you are dealing with a lot of choices my preferred chest is the Mighty Mini and due to it’s size I feel it is even more versatile than the original.

As with many clever utility items once you have the perfect prop coming up with the perfect routine to do it justice.  Larry includes six routines in the detailed instructions and any of them will work perfectly though in most cases you will need to provide some readily available extras like small golf pencils and pads.

For my routine I decided to base the routine on Mark Elsdon’s Guaranteed Jackpot. I found some perfect sized plastic numbers over at Amazon and came up with the following effect which I will video soon.  I think it works very well with this beautiful box and I hope you like it.

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What a beautiful item from the talented craftsman from Croatia, Damir Djanis.  This is the sixth of Damir’s items released by George Robinson at Viking Mfg. and there is no doubt it is magnificently crafted.

However, as an effect initially it did not do much for me. The provided patter is interesting enough if you like telling stories. And, if you are a good story teller, then I’m sure the spectators will also be entertained.  But I don’t think it matters how good a story teller you are, they will not be that amazed by the reveal at the end. Telling a lay person what is inside a cleverly constructed magic box is not that amazing to them.  Something like the Tele-Vision Box which has a cleaner and simpler construction is much more effective because of the two boxes and there seems no way you could ever see inside both.  But with just a single lid it doesn’t take too much to think of ways to look inside with a peek here and a mirror there (to the layman at least).

That being said if you are collecting Damir’s magic you are probably doing it for the sheer joy of owning beautiful magic and probably not performing them to anyone but your magic buddies and for that purpose it is perfect 🙂 With the one exception of Damir’s Intangibility I could not see myself performing any of his other effects to lay people.  To be fair this is also true with a huge amount of the collectible magic we all love and cherish, so Damir is no different in this regard 🙁

However, after some thought about this problem I came up with a routine that I would be happy to perform to lay people that is entertaining and I believe quite amazing using El Duco’s Signed Card to Hip Wallet – please check out the Speed Demo 🙂 🙂

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