talkmagic.co.uk

Great news. Finally a magic shop I can easily reach on the train. Expect me dropping in sometime fairly soon.

My experience with Aladdins magic shop has turned a little bizarre.

After visiting the shop and having a nice experience I posted to this thread saying it was a good place to visit and the prices were great including some examples. A day or so later I got a PM on here from the owner Ken, he asked me to remove the section in my post about his prices. I didnt want any trouble, or get involved in any dramas or politics so I just deleted the lot and thought nothing of it.

Now this is where everything turns a bit strange.

While in the shop Ken told me about a competition on the website, there were 6 pictures of magicians and you had to tell him who they were. Simple but not easy as I couldnt get many of them in the shop. Later that evening by coincendence I was watching a video clip posted by Jeff McBride on his website and bang, it contained Eugiene Burger! where have I seen that face before?? On aladdins competition, so thought id give it a go. After some research I got all the answers and fired off an email with my answers. Closing date was the 15th December.

A week or so later I get a message via Kry10 on Facebook asking if I could put my message back on here minus the bit about prices. Kry10 was just passing on a message that came to him via a guy call Ian. Ian is a customer of aladdins apparently.

No-one has been able to explain how they found me on facebook, my name is on here and Lee is my real name and my avatar here is the same as the one on FB so if you saw me you would know it was me. But it doesnt explain why he has asked a customer to look for me on facebook or why how he looked for me. Im not being unreasonable in thinking this is a bit stalker and a bit out of order for a shop? Especially getting another customer to do the dirty work?

The email adress I have registered with facebook isnt the same one as I use day to day to email people so they havent done it that way either.

In the new year the competition winner hadnt been announced so I looked on their website, nothing. Went on their facebook page after trying to avoid it and asked if the competition winner had been announced. My post was swiftly deleted, so I left another asking why it had been deleted and that was deleted but my old one restored. The competition section from their website has now been deleted too. I dont think they expected anyone to get all the magicians

Its not just me who has experienced this weirdness, I mentioned it at the magicians meet last saturday and other people had have similar stalker type stories related to the shop. MagicianMike has been found on twitter by Ken.

Its all a bit weird, if you want to be hunted out in this way, feel free to visit the shop. If you value your privacy, id give it a miss.

Wow, curiouser and curiouser....

I never saw the original post Lee, but you say you recommended it and praised its prices? Just how low were they? I can only think of one scenario in which a magic retailer (shop or online) would want their pricing removed from the public eye so to speak.....

It was the prices that drew me in tbh, I usually order online but saw they had close up matts for around £8, they are usually £12-13 plus postage. The shop is on the way to reddish vale where my eldest rides horses so went down for a practise mat!

Whilst there he showed me spike sharpie edition, it's only £65 in there, it's £130 everywhere else so I was pretty amazed at the saving so I thought it was worth a mention. He showed me other stuff too, one item is over £300 in most places, he was asking £120.

Very reasonable indeed, many would say too reasonable

I hadn't read the full post when I posted my initial post on here. The posts about the prices being low are what caught my eye. It was only after reading the rest of the thread that I got speaking to my wife about our visit. She was the one that commented about the store. She had aclose look at some of the DVDs on display and questioned why the quality of the DVD covers wasn't as good as the same Dvd's I have at home. We decided it was because it was due to being on display all the time. I have taken a look at the China site and the thumbnails used on both sites are the same identical products.

I am now concerned I may have bought a copy of a product.


I have not had any strange behaviour since my visit but it shows if it seems to good to be true it probably is.

Just looked on the site.... Some of the stuff on there looks like it's come from a certain magic shop in china that I won't mention.

Tony Hyams wrote:Just looked on the site.... Some of the stuff on there looks like it's come from a certain magic shop in china that I won't mention.

My thoughts exactly. Very sad to see a seemingly popular and reputable shop with such stock.

Is it a shop with 52 in the name?

I really hope this shop isn't selling ripped off goods. Unfortunately it does seem to be. Many of the prices seem fairly ordinary (for example the raven is around the ordinary price), but then they are selling ultracinese for £25 !?!

Hmmm...

A quick Google Shopping search reveals that a genuine Wizard PK ring is usually £30+ However, Aladdin's have a ring called "Magnetic Ring In Silver" whose picture is of the usual Wizard ring in its box (same picture used elsewhere to advertise the genuine Wizard ring, in fact) for just £11.99

He has very little on his site compared to what he has in store. He has all the latest stuff and his site would be far more comprehensive if he listed it all.

I think I will be visiting this shop next weekend (it's only a few minutes away on the train), so I will everyone know what I think.

Be sure to set your Facebook profile to private

According to his ebay profile, everything ships from China.