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Matchbooking by S.J.Lea

The Effect/What it says on the can
The name of a chosen card magically appears embossed on the cover of a book of matches. Imagine handing a spectator a deck of cards to shuffle, whilst you remove three candles from your pocket along with some matchbooks you swiped from your last booking - a wedding, the happy couple's names embossed on the covers.

Once the deck is shuffled to your spectator's satisfaction, three cards are dealt facedown onto the table and a candle is put in front of each card. The spectator is instructed to choose a card by lighting one of the candles. The chosen card is revealed.

The spectator is asked to look at the matchbook in her hand. The couple's names have disappeared, replaced by the name of the chosen card. Reaching inside your pocket you pull out a deck of cards, a scrap of paper, and a pen. As well as some matchbooks you nicked from your last booking at a wedding reception.

After shuffling the deck, the spectator is asked pick a card and to write down whatever it is on the scrap of paper. This paper is then burnt. Note: There are no switches, peeks or centre tears involved. Using your clairvoyant abilities, or so you tell your spectators, you will now discover the identity of the chosen card. You begin to speculate as to how you will (or did) go about this: did you read the flames, or the smoke? Did you simply read the spectator's mind or can you discover anything from the pen? The answer, you inform your audience, lies in the book of matches.
Taking back the book of matches, carefully with sleeves rolled up if you like, you open up the cover. Will the identity of the randomly chosen card be written inside the flap? No.

Closing the flap, you begin to rub the surface of the matchbook cover - the newlywed names disappear, replaced by the name of the chosen card.
The price includes full instructions and 5 matchbooks. The matchbooks themselves are standard matchbooks and can be used for any other tricks and effects that require matchbooks to perform. They are all one colour, with gold-embossed writing on the front cover and a striking strip on the back cover. There are 15 matches in each book.


Cost
£6.00 (Including UK P&P) from http://www.mental-magic.com/mb.htm


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)

1

Review
The blurb above covers it all very nicely, there's just one easy peasy sleight, perhaps better described as a 'move', and one which, assuming you don’t already use it, everyone can do within seconds of reading the details. You'll need to provide your own candles or tea lights, a deck of cards plus a couple of other items which most will already have or could obtain easily enough. I can see this as being a very good clincher if you have to audition or demonstrate your skills to a prospective bride and groom, the concept of it all happening as a result of a previous (fictitious!) wedding booking is a every nice touch. Lots of scope for personalisation, could be presented as light hearted or deeply mental - the choice is yours. Simon has produced a very do-able effect at a very modest cost.


Overall
9/10 very nice indeed!

Nice!! A couple of friends of mine are getting married in the summer. Something like this could be ideal for later on. You also say that its easy to do which is good as I find that sometimes my sleights become a bit more 'wayward' as time goes by at weddings and parties.

Was is the setup like? Can it be done various times fairly easily (in front of different people) or just done once?

You'd really only do this once as the result is, er, 'guaranteed' so to speak but if you feel that one bunch of specs won't have seen you do this earlier or at another table, you'd probably get away with repeating it. I'm no cardie and my feeble attempts at proper sleights are embarrassingly awful but in this case it's not really a sleight at all - just a bit of jiggery pokery which is quite easy to do. After that it's all patter, presentation and showmanship.

Set up is easy and you just drop the props down on the table, arrange them neatly and away you go. The use of candles/tea lights are a nice touch and you can buy gold or silver ones from card shops, Hobbycraft or similar places, or you could just use ordinary white ones from Tesco's!

Apart from the candles which obviously burn away with continued use, everything else is retained for the next performance. If you're feeling generous you could leave the book of matches with the lucky spec but you'd need to buy replacements.

Hi Mandrake,
are the matchbooks reuseable? ie. can you perform this more than 5 times without having to send away for an extra pack of matchbooks? Also, how closely do the matchbooks stand up to inspection before and after?

Cheers - I'll probably get this anyway, for the price!

The matchbooks are very reusable, you just do the biz with them and at the end pick them up and take them away unless you want to leave one with the spec, having written your contact details on first. On the matchbook not the spec. Alternatively, you could leave the revealed card with your details on instead. I haven't checked about buying more matchbooks because I'm too tight-fisted to give anything away but I guess Simon will be able to advise on that score.

Just to clarify, one match is used each time by the spec to light a chosen candle so they will be used up gradually but it's not rocket science to replace the innards of these matchbooks from ordinary ones.

Wills wrote:Nice!! A couple of friends of mine are getting married in the summer. Something like this could be ideal for later on. You also say that its easy to do which is good as I find that sometimes my sleights become a bit more 'wayward' as time goes by at weddings and parties.

Was is the setup like? Can it be done various times fairly easily (in front of different people) or just done once?

The moves are pretty easy. You'd have to be way-way-wayward to be unable to pull them off. The setup is minimal but as Mandrake has said, the result is pre-determined so you wouldn't want to perform the effect twice for the same audience.

I came up with the idea when I was trying to come up with something I could pull out my pocket to demonstrate what I could do. Hence the matchbooks from a 'previous booking'. The candles make it in bit more showy. I normally pull out the matchbooks from my pocket while I'm looking for my cards and then move on from there.

In addition, if you use the matches to burn a piece of paper in this effect, you can easily segue into a center t. effect involving burning the billet. Since you've just done it straight for the matchbooking effect, you're under no suspicion when burning a billet in a second effect.