talkmagic.co.uk

[Photofnish]

I've really enjoyed reading the reviews here -- not to mention the great tips I've received -- so I figured it was high time to chime in with a review of my own...

The Effect
From the dealer copy: "In an instant a selected card vanishes under impossible conditions and appears in your wallet! You explain that the first time really wasn't fair for the audience because they didn't know what to expect...so you offer to repeat it. The spectator again chooses a card and it, too vanishes in an instant! You ask the spectator to pick up your wallet from the table and open it up...inside they find the missing card! A true one-two punch in the world of card-to-wallets.

Uses any standard Bicycle deck. Wallet contains only one card each time. Wallet is totally examinable. No palming or sleight-of-hand.
Comes complete with detailed instructions, bonus ideas, the special gimmicks and slim leather ID wallet."

Cost
$17.95 (US) from Magic Pro Shop. Also available from Elmwood Magic.

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)

I'd probably give it a 1.5. For a person with competent card-handling skills (I'm almost there), this is a piece of cake. No difficult sleights are needed; you simply need to learn the routine, apply a couple easy handling techniques, and employ a smidgeon (and I mean a smidgeon) of memory work. The instructions, which are very clear and well-written, call for an easy force I'd never encountered before (though a standard riffle force can also be used), so I spent a few minutes learning the force and making it smooth. Otherwise, the effect is quite easy to pull off.

Review
Everything the ad says is true. This is a clever trick, it's beautifully simple, and it packs a good punch. That said, one could conceivably cite two small negatives:

1) The deck isn't overly examinable. You can show the cards -- this is actually part of the presentation -- but you probably don't want to let the spectator examine the deck with their own hands.

2) The cards can't be signed.

The first issue isn't a big deal -- the trick seems fair, so why does a spec need to handle the cards at all? As for the no-signed-card issue, signing just doesn't really seem necessary to me in this routine. After all, you perform the trick twice!

Overall
For the money, this is a sweet deal. The props are well made, and the concept lends itself to other applications.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a solid 9.