OK, this can get a little bit difficult. Because this is not a review in the common sense. So please, admin, transfer this thread to the appropriate place, but I could not find a better one.
I would love to share my newest creation with you. I was asked by a belgium magician - Tonny van Rhee - to produce the cards for a completely new handling of the Gypsy Curse of Peter Kane. He wanted something that REALLY looked 200 years old. And in the 18th or 19th century the playing cards completely looked different than they do now.
I created the gaffed cards and here you can see the
demo performance of Tonny.
When I showed these cards to other magicians including Juan Tamariz, Roberto Giobbi and Richard Sanders the reactions where always overwhelming so I decided to create a whole deck with these old looking playing cards. And this should be the perfect deck for magicians:
- they are very subtle marked on the back so that you can easily find out which card is selected
- the cards look really old and worn out but they are actually printed on first class linen structure playing card stock so every handling is possible, even a double-lift, palming and other nice sleights of hands
- they have an old Tarot-size so that they are not familiar to usual Poker-sized cards. But they are still small enough so that you can palm a card
- as old cards they should have no corner roundings, but I will give them small ones to improve the handling
- every card looks different, the printings on the cards have scratches all over
- I used old looking images (indeed they are based on a poker deck from early 1800) but the images are still familiar to all layman
- all picture cards have the index printed on the upper left corner so that they will be seen easily when spreading the deck.
- I would include Joker cards even if they were invented much later than 1800.
So here is an
image of the prototype.
To improve the value of the deck I want to create
additional gaffed cards. Here are some ideas I had and want to include when producing the deck (the Pip Matrix will not been realized, but instead there will be a Wild Card effect from Joerg Alexander from the Flicking Fingers).
And after that I got several demands from bizarre magicians to realize also an old looking Tarot deck. So yes, I will also produce the
Medieval Tarot, by clicking the link you can get an overview of the cards.
This is also completely marked, additional force card sets will be available. And after all, I will offer a
set of trick cards of the Medieval Tarot.
So this is not a review, just an offer to you to ask me questions about the cards and the idea behind them. I will introduce these cards live at the International Magic Convention in London in November.
Let me hear what you are thinking! Every comment is welcome.
Thank you very much.
Christian