by pcwells » Dec 7th, '09, 15:42
I bought Powerball 60 for strolling gigs as a way of seamlessly moving into an effect if ever anyone mentions the National Lottery and/or Derren Brown.
It's not one that I'll voluntarily offer up...
hey, let's do something with the waste paper in my wallet
...but the national Lottery comments such as 'can you give me some winning lottery numbers?', are a common gag among spectators, second only to 'can you make my wife disappear?', in terms of popularity.
Don't talk to me about the lottery. I weaning myself off it. It's a slow process, though. I managed to quit the weekly draws, but I'm now doing scratchcards. But my doctor says I'm doing well and reckons I'll be down to one a week by the New Year. I can't even throw the damn things away when I lose...
As for the trick itself, I don't think anyone will be surprised when they find out the method. But what makes this exciting is that the cards appear to have already served a very different purpose. They're not props. And if you perform this with any degree of presentational competence, they won't register on the audience's radar at all.
If you treat the cards as magic props, and present them as such, you'll end up with a cute trick that a few laypeople might remember from their childhood.
Use them as part of an organic conversation and treat them like your wallet's usual debris, and they'll probably work very well for you.
For me, at least, this is money well spent. It's not a presentation piece, but I'm now forearmed with a very nice 'spontaneous' off-on-a-tangent brainfart type thing.
Pete