talkmagic.co.uk

Hi!
Quick introduction: I am a starting magician all the way from Finland. I've always been fascinated of magic - especially mentalism and card magic. I begun learning card magic when I was about 10, but sadly I stopped because of the lack of time. Now 9 years later, I stumbled upon this great forum, and learned about many internet sites that sell magic. That said, I truly appreciate the fact that there isn't much spoiling done on the web, and I think it's great that you guys hold a strict discipline about exposure.
I've recently bought "13 steps to mentalism", as I've read that it should be a good introduction to mentalism. I also bought a pack of regular bikes, black tigers and vipers (I must say the handling is awesome compared to the decks sold in Finland!).

So much for the offtopic! Card magic has always been my favourite kind of magic. The fact that almost all laymen know that it involves slights, misdirection etc. makes it even more exciting, as one has to perform really good to achieve some kind of "WOW" or "how did you do that??" responses from the croud.
There are endless possibilites to combine different effects, which I find to be most appealing. My question to YOU is, why do You like card magic?

I will try to be more active on this forum, as I want to contribute the same amount you have to me.

Side note: I hope this is the right place for the topic, moderators are welcome to move the topic. Also, I hope there are not many threads about this - I didn't find any topics regarding this at the first glance.

Welcome to TM

I love card magic because the first magic I ever saw that impressed me was with a deck of cards, in fact, my own deck, at age 8. I stayed awake for ages trying to figure it out.

When I've talked about magic with people, most of them remember the first magic trick they've seen to be card magic! This was also the case for me

Greetings, ironbay - Love the Lion-O avatar!

Card magic is also my favorite form of magic. I think what I love about cards most, is versatility. With a deck of cards, you can perform so many different things. You can make things vanish - appear - rip them up and restore them - change color - change face - transposition effects, the list goes on.

You can adapt cards to incorporate concepts from every genre of magic.

Like you, I also like the "challenge" of it.

i dont love card tricks cos everyone else is so good at them! and i aint

i do like watching them it amazes me what some people can do

When I started I didn't really want to do cards, but if you are looking to do close up then they cannot be avoided. Card tricks have a very good learning curve too. There's so many self working or easy tricks you can do that are just really amazing.

When I pick up a pack of cards I see it in two different ways. I see it as handled by two magicians. Jay Sankey and Derren Brown. I don't know if you guys agree with me, but this is how it works in my head-

Jay Sankey-
Uses cards mainly as objects. Tears them, writes on them, messes around with them as plain objects. Think about most of the effects he sells and it's true. In a flash, Bigger Finish, Fine Print, Nailed, pretty much all of them. It's good fun to experiment with them this way, and works well when performing magic casually or off the cuff. This is the route I usually follow when I'm feeling more creative, and have many different medias to work with (Duplicates, markers, cut up cards etc.)

Derren Brown-
Here I'm mainly refering to The Devils Picturebook. He says himself -'The whole appeal to cards is their elegance', and this is is the other way I use a pack of cards. This mainly occurs when I'm fiddling with a full pack of cards and play around with culling cards, stacking and ordering, and different ways of presenting simple tricks. Sure, it's more challenging but the end product can be worth it a lot of the time.

That's just a little theory I have, which shows two reasons why I love cards. They're such a universal prop. I hope you understand what I mean, but hey, just something to think about.