talkmagic.co.uk

Thats one thing that this forum is great for- you can learn from everyone else's experience and mistakes. Although no secrets are given away you can get great advice on what to buy.

One thing that I have certainly learned is not to go for flashy gimmicks and the like. Oh and that sleights rule all!! How needs gimmicks when I can force a card to the top, bottom then have it jump out of a deck.

Mikey.666 wrote:

seige wrote:£5-10k worth of cack.

OUCH!

Bear in mind, most of the cack is purely down to two things:

1. CUPS
2. A 19/20 year old with far too much disposable income

I went through a spell of spending money like water in magic shops. I call it the 'clutching at straws' period of my magic journey.

I am much more sensible these days, and really only buy DVDs or Books which I want, rather than which I see everyone else saying I 'need'.

I also buy a lot of stuff for consideration for stocking in the NUMS shop. This may sound like a dream come true, but it's really very taxing.

What I may even do is put an 'ex-demo' area on NUMS where I put all the 'tried that, it's not worthy' speculative products for sale. Most of the stuff is as-new. I literally order one, take a look, and box it!

Being quite new to Magic in the beginning I was fascinated by the books and DVDs. Then I discovered all the props and gimmick and started ordering. Some of them are great and I always make many routines with ID,Svengali, Mindpower decks etc.
However the feeling you get when you are at a house and you say " Do you have a deck of cards ?" and you perform a trick you learned from RRTCM is simply priceless.
And now I started carrying around a TT everywhere I go.
I now try to learn as much stuff as I can from RRTCM , Wilson's Course, 13 steps and the likes and trying to reduce my cups in buying just some mindblowing effects (up and then though you will always buy something for no particular reason (other than Cups I mean ) ).
Good topic Chris !

...the other thing that kinda gets overlooked sometimes are the other forms of classic magic...cup and balls...i mean, come on...thats genius...

jardin ellis ring - which i only got myself a few weeks back...thats another...the sponge ball backlash...rope magic has been mentioned by a few on here recently too...

i reviewed it here a while ago now, but i love my buddha double chop cup...

we should start a campaign of bringing back classic magic...not just cards or mentalism...there's always room to add new imaginative twists as well as pure replication of the more charming era of magic...

Bringing back magic classics was exactly my aim at NUMS, and it still is.

I try to shy away from all the new 'hyped' stuff, and supply 'building blocks' rather than one-hit wonders.

For sure, there are some packet effects etc, but they are ones which I feel are there for their worth in magic, rather than popularity, i.e. 'NFW!' and Colour Monte.

As time goes on, I aim to be a 'magic boutique for magicians' rather than a 'one-stop shop for dabblers'.

So many online magic shops are like sheep: they stock all and sundry with no consideration for the consumer at all. They're happy to peddle crud, for the sake of a fast buck.

And with the deluge of magic shops cropping up, I find it almost sickening to see the amount of bandwagon jumping going on... i.e. 'That's a new product, and it's popular, let's stock it—even though it's rubbish'.

Not my raison d'etre at all.

MTV magic - Magically Taught Vanity...

though saying all this, my last two purchases were two dvds, but fairs fair...it was Ed Marlo...genius that he was...at least it was him teaching you...

now thats what dvds should be used for, preserving past masters work...

taking that as an example actually, one dvd cost me twenty three quid i think, The Legend...compare that to say Shapeshifter for around 18quid...which are you going to learn more from?

it would be nice to see as a link on a magic-shop site:
The Classics

then a drill down to each category with little starter kits...

I can totally relate to this thread. I've returned to magic after more years away from it than I care to say, and as luck would have it, my return coincided with a period of flat-out brassic brokenness. This has pretty much forced me down the classic e-book route (yay lybrary!), and the decision that if I'm going to be buying any props, then I'm going to be buying utility devices, rather than the one-trick ponies. I may have more gaff decks than I really ought to, but again these tend towards utility.

Last night I did some magic muckery with some friends, but couldn't get my RaMa deck to perform at all well. This was because one of my friends somehow managed to riffle shuffle it properly(!). The trick that held the best reaction, though, involved a regular deck, a pass, a palm, and the appearance of a selected card in my glasses while the riffler had her eyes closed (concentrating on her card, you understand (and, no, I didn't say "now close your eyes")). The second best reaction was a very cheeky cut to four aces. This is not only an encouragement to my slow and sausage-fingered education in card-handling, but also financially reassuring.

abraxus wrote:MTV magic - Magically Taught Vanity...

Yup good point.

You can't go wrong with the classics.

seige wrote:What I may even do is put an 'ex-demo' area on NUMS where I put all the 'tried that, it's not worthy' speculative products for sale. Most of the stuff is as-new. I literally order one, take a look, and box it!

Good idea Seige.

Nice thread, I don't think it can be emphasized enough how much more value and mileage there is to be gained from books. Most of these one trick dvds are taken from old effects in books anyhow. I think kids in general today are too lazy to read through a good magic volume, it takes a lot more work and imagination to read and interpret an effect in your own style than to just copy exactly what you see on screen ( any monkey could do that ( monkey see monkey do ))