talkmagic.co.uk

Hi there,

I have a question I'd like to ask. But a small story before that:
During my schooldays I learned a nice trick from my father and showed it to my friends. I don't know if the trick has a name, but it's very simple so I describe it here. I hope this is not exposure. (Well, I'm quite selfcontradicting, in my introduction I just said I learned that exposure is NAY and now I do it again .
If this too much exposure here, can a mod kindly remove that part?)
In this trick you take some court cards (8 in my case) and lay them down in rows. As you face away from the table you tell a spectator to turn a card 180 degrees (NOT upside down, this would be too easy ). As you turn back you can tell them easily which card they turned. As I repeated this trick (I know, another NAY, never do the same thing twice) and nobody got the slightest idea how I could do this, they even sneakily turned 3 card and I was able to tell them.
They asked me for minutes how I did this and I finally gave in and told them that I just looked at the border of the cards. For this trick I chose only cards with one border slightly narrower than the opposite one, so for the next turn I just had to remember which cards were already turned.
After this they were really disappointed that it was that easy. So it was also me who was disappointed, as I took away the amazement and neither me nor them wanted to do another trick (but I did not know a second good one at this time anyway).
I did this trick with quite cheap german cards (32 cards deck). To train the sleights from RRTCM I bought two bicycle decks and tought that these should offer better quality than my old ones. I was quite surprised to see that both bicycle decks contained cards that are really bad cut. The borders differ in width between two and five Millimeters. I'm sure even an untrained eye would discover this easily when I'm trying a DL or such.
Is this normal for the bicycle decks or even for all manufacturers?
What cards would you recommend for training?
Maybe I should use cards without any border?

Thanks and bye,
MarkyMarc

I wouldn't worry about it, bikes are often printed slightly off but people just don't notice.

As for cards without borders, you'll find that doing a DL with these is much harder because unless they sit perfectly, the lack of a border will make the DL easier to spot than if there was a white border.

For a different way of acheiving the same effect you could use Bicycle cards with League as opposed to Rider back.

Most Bikes have at least a few uneven margins. My last deck of blue Bikes, however, had a severely uneven six of hearts. I sent it with the ace of spades to the manufacturer, and, as promised on the guarantee, they sent me a new deck.

Thanks for your replies.
I don't think I will send the deck to the manufacturer, as the postage will be more than the deck is worth. I'll buy another 2 or 3 decks and if they are also equally bad, I'll send them in altogether. Some of the cards are really a lot more than slightly off.

@Lady: I should have noticed that. The white border makes it really a lot harder to detect minor handling errors.

All manufacture's run into the problem of off set cards. Cards are normally printed in very large runs and the machines are only re-inked and reset at certain times. Bicycle for example has three distinct qualities. The first batch that comes off the line are not great quality and are reserved for dollar stores and cheap toy stores. The second set in a run are premium and are sold to upscale game stores and casino's, {and your better magic stores} As the run comes to an end they are sent to department stores, which are typically not that bad. They are priced wholesale accordingly. When I had a magic shop I once got in a really bad lot of cards. I spoke with a representative who had me read off a serial number, the rep who came to the store actually took the lot I had and sold them to a dollar store down the street and the replacements I got were a much better quality. I still find it is hit and miss, some decks are just better then others. The audience never notices the difference.

Someone absolutely _fried_ me today with a trick based on the one-way nature of misprinted cards. The presentation covered it so well I just wasn't looking for it. So subtly mis-printed cards can become a great weapon!

absoloutely! i love a slightly off printed back to my bikes, i think they are totally out of this world