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ABRA is a magazine and not really a trick so this reveiw differs slightly from the template.

The Magazine
Heres the story walked into tam shepards in glasgow ( owned by Roy Walton) and was buying a silk, paid for that and decided to buy a magzine and with exactly £1 in my wallet i bought ABRA. It's OK small but OK and its weekly and has been goin on for queit a while.



Cost
As I said above its £1.



Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)
Well Id have to give it a 1 since there were no big words and the pages were easy to fold over.....


Review
Well....
It was an ok read on the train back home with tidbits of wisdom from a magician long dead but it didnt really overtly discuss tricks..this was the first magic magazine which I hav ever bought so ok mayb my hopes were high but it didnt reveiw any tricks which was something i expected (dunno y). However it did hav some routines, but never went into great detail, which gave me ideas for patter but apart from that....well there was reveiws of Magic conferences...but none in Scotland which did nt really help me.....
Ill probably never buy it again but if it sounds like ur thing ul really ejoy it I hope. Maybe its like marmite.



Overall

2/5 for cheapness and some ideas for patter.

Contact details for the publishers and details of subscription rates etc are at http://www.goodliffe.co.uk/

I used to subscribe to this about fifteen years ago and it gradually became (in my opinion) duller and duller. Occasionally there was something of interest but it soon became a pamphlet of reports about local magic societies' contests and the only things worth looking at were the adverts and 'what's on' section, which is a shame as it's only a quid.

I can beat that Freddie, I've still got copies of this mag from 25yrs ago.

Did it have anything of interest then?
I subscribed for a few years, out of habit really, but I learnt nothing useful from it other than the names of some dealers that sold stuff I was interested in.
I bought a copy this year in Davenports, purely out of habit and finding that there was a pound left in my pocket and I always leave that shop penniless, and the main focus of the magazine was a review of some tedious junior magician contest with lots of pictures of kids dressed up in sily outfits holding bits of rope.

There was a mag produced, I think by Repro Magic, called Club 33 and I used to subscribe to that one too. If I remember it was a lot better than Abra and has some interesting articles rather than filler. It was a lot thicker too.

Yeah, I have a few copies of Club 33 somewhere. It was definitely a better read than Abra, if I recall. I know Abra is only a quid, but it doesn't get my juices flowing, if you'll pardon the expression. I never did get much out of it, but that's just me. Other magician's will no doubt find it to be indispensible. I guess it depends what you're looking for in a magazine/pamphlet. Horses for courses, like always.

And not forgetting the classic Magigram by Supreme Magic, that was a genuinely good read, I still have loads of back issues of this which I dip into once in a while, it was a real shame it stopped being published.

what was the magazine like on page 3?? anything i mean for a quid

At the time I thought they were the dogs b******s, but looking at them now they are soooooooo dated. A few pictures of very camp looking magicians producing fans of cards, quite a lot of advertisements and always a "how to do" effect.

Well it must have something. I wonder if some of you will still be going after 61 years and never missed an issue!

Basically Abra records a fair amount of British Magic's History and as such is a valuable reference tool for future practitioner/sstudents of our Art.
In its early years it did boast a goodly number of tricks but guys, haven't you learned that there's more to Magic than just tricks?
Roy Davenport & Walt Lees are experimenting weekly, trying to expand it bring it into modern times.

The Alkhemist07: you need a magazine or book on how to spell!
Joe Carr14. You'd better stick to those dvds.

Allen Tipton

damn that mag has gone down in my books, and i havent even got it...

Can any one remember Magic Info published by International Unique Magic Studio. I have a few from 1977

I'll have to put my hands up and support Abra. I subscribed for years and years. It's true that there's not as much in it as there used to be but I think you need to take a look at Abra as a collection of issues, rather than just a stand alone, in the same way as you might a comic book with an on-going storyline.

Magic and Genii are far superior, that much is true, however, not blowing my own trumpet or anything but I did have a few tricks published in there myself during the mid 90s (around about the time the Magigram finished I think).

I'll need to dig them out and have a look, to see if there's any card tricks on the market that are copying my ideas

I did like Abra initially, but I think the content these days is not something that interests me personally. I stopped subscribing about ten years ago and recently bought a copy when I was in Davenports but it was mainly full of reports of kids magic competitions with pictures of the children performing. This may interest some people but it's not for me I'm afraid.

Years ago it used to have interesting columns and tips from pros but the last issue I bought was lacking in this and was mostly full of adverts. Maybe it was a dud edition, but it didn't have much to interest me.

I have bought a few issues of Magicseen and found this to be very good. I should subscribe really.

Clearly this is a touchy subject with many here at TM.
I didnt want to seem insulting with my reveiw maybe the edition I bought wasnt that good but maybe Im wrong.
From some of your replies it seems you have just bought ABRA because its there and is now part of your life but it is a low blow to tell me I should buy a magazine about spelling. I have 1 question for you do you have a tatoo saying:
"Dyslexics of the world untie"
1 of the things about reveiw is that they are objective and let me tell you that can really suck sometimes.