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I purchased this trick today for £4.50 from Davenports Magic store in London! Only been messing with it for half an hour and a group of 10 mates completely CONFUSED!

The Effect
You show a small packet of cards(9 to be excact) and show the bottom to be the eight of hearts(this could vary from shop to shop). The magician deals the cards from the bottom into two piles. One face up, and one face down, each card he puts down being shown as the eight of hearts(again, or other card). The last card is the King of clubs(the wild card) and as if by magic, the four face down cards turn into four king of clubs. the magician squares these up, and one by one turns the four eight of hearts left on the table into kings of clubs, leaving a fan of NINE KINGS OF CLUBS.!



Cost
£4.50 from Davenports, not sure if available elsewhere.


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)

3...DL and Glide.

Review
A brilliant trick for someone who knows the basic sleights. It is a great opener for a show and for eyes! There are several probelems however. For example, one wrong move (DL or glide) and you are going to look like a right nelly and people will forever be suspicious. It is VITAL that everything goes smooth, theres no plan b for this trick.

It is also virtually impossible to show more than once because ordering of cards and different "gimmicks" are used.

In conclusion, a decent trick that will and does fit pefectly between joiner more drastic and substantial card tricks.


Overall

There's a very beautiful way of performing this in Shigeo Takagi's Amazing Miracles book. To my mind it is a great improvement on the original presentation since there is much less repetition.

(and if you saw my earlier post about not getting the book for Christmas - I borrowed someone else's copy a few years ago which is how I know about this! In fact, it was after seeing someone perform the Wild Card Routine this way that got me interested in seeing the book!)

There are several versions out there; Jon Racherbaumer wrote an entire book on the subject, with many different routines. The plot was originally called 'Watch the Ace' by Peter Kane, and was 'borrowed' and embellished into Wild Card by Frank Garcia.

Several notable versions:

Shigeo Takagi's two versions, one with cards and one with signatures on business cards from The Amazing Miracles of Shigeo Takagi

Dan Harlan has a nice ungimmicked version at the end of the BandShark video (not sure if it's on the DVD version)

Steven Hamilton's In the Hands Wildcard is the best of the 'no table' versions; everything happens in the hands and has an almost instant reset. Tough to find these days, but was published in Profile magazine, Steve's booklet Rarities and Paul Wilson's Little Black Book lecture notes.

Other no table versions are from Tommy Wonder (Books of Wonder and his L&L DVD) and Tom Dobrowlowski (sp?)

I'm sure there are 387 other versions in print, but that's enough off the top of my head.

Take care, Ian

Addendum: purely by chance, I've just been leafing through Apocalypse and found Takagi's routine - so if you have the second volume (the red one) it's on page 1096.

Take care, Ian

One of my favourite things ever is going into my friends dads old magic collection. 100s of props, leaflets, books and other gimmicks stashed away in boxes. All very old school but for things that never get used their probably worth a fortune.

Hes the man that told me about the trick and I was intrigued to here about it!

Good or bad first review::)