It's Monday and you know what that means... Monday Mail Call!
It's been a few months since my last Mail Call, but truth be told I've still been receiving things left-and-right. I just haven't had the time to write about everything. Today though, I figured it's time to highlight a few things I got in recently.
First up, two red books:
- Letters from Juan - Vol. 1, The Secrets of Juan Tamariz
- Jean-Pierre Vallarino
While I'll be posting full reviews on both, both on this blog and on YouTube, I wanted to briefly mention my progress into the books here. I've read Letters from Juan all the way through, and I'm about 1/3rd of the way through Jean-Pierre Vallarino. The former falls far below my expectations and the latter has blown them out of the water. Specifically, I'm rather upset at the material presented in the small Juan Tamariz booklet, and I am super excited with the vast amount of really useful material in Vallarino's. Stay tuned for more on both =]
Next up is a video, the Bluff Shift Bundle by Joshua Jay (err, by Vanishing Inc). This video's pretty old, I think Josh starts it by saying it's his first video for the site even -- it looks like the quality of an old VHS tape, but holy smokes is it great. I know what a Bluff Pass is, I've used it plenty ... but not like this. My biggest issue with the cover, something I haven't actually taken time to think about fixing, is knocked out of the park by this video.
I'll write a full thing about it (late to the party, but still worthwhile), however, I do want to highlight that the thing is pretty awesome so far (and I've only watched half of it). If you jump on it, it's currently 50% off; unfortunately for me, I bought it ~2 weeks ago and paid full price -- but it's well worth it. Here's a direct link to it if you're interested.
Last up, a couple of decks. Full disclosure, I received a lot of decks over the past few weeks, but I really only want to highlight 2 of them:
The first deck, Casino54, was sent to me as a prototype for their Kickstarter campaign. I really like the deck myself -- if you're reading this and the campaign's still active, go back it now (^_^). If you want to see more about the deck first, I have a review here:
The second deck, Coffee Playing Cards, has been on my wishlist for years. This deck was released back in 2019 and only 300 were made and they were mostly sold at speaking events; a limited number were sold online, but that sold out super fast. I always say that I'm not a deck collector, but when it comes to coffee-themed decks, I collect them. This one has eluded me... until now!
I was able to strike a trade for it; of of my unopened If an Octopus Could Palm v2 decks for it -- and I was more than happy to make that trade! One really awesome part is that the deck's signed by Edo, and it's still unopened! I legitimately thought that the deck was used (and I would have still been happy with it), but nope, the cards inside are still cellophane-wrapped and all! Well, not for long anyways =]
Everything I've mentioned above will have full write-ups on the site soon. When I can, I'll also include more photos and potentially video reviews as well. I'm just excited to dive into that coffee deck (^_^)
I have a few things that are coming in soon that I think will be worth highlighting too, so stay tuned for the next iteration of Monday Mail Call, there's a lot more to come!
Oh also, if you'd like to offer suggestions for books, tricks, decks or if you have questions about magic (performing, routines, sleights, etc.), just reach out here.