A month or two ago, I saw a post on Instagram on Vanishing Inc. account (@vanishingincmagic) that was announcing Talk About Tricks, and I thought it looked neat. I didn't read the caption during my mindless scrolling, so it really didn't register that it was that Talk About Tricks. A few days after that, I saw the same post on Joshua Jay's account (@joshuajaymagician) that I started to realize that this could be a book to buy!

And so, I waited. The sale went live at like 11am or something and I was there pretty much on the dot, and then I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw that it was $250. And there were two books. Did I have to buy them separately or was the order for both?! It didn't say -- but it also didn't give an option to select either volume so I went with the idea that it was for both (spoiler: it was!).

The books arrived 2 days later, the fastest shipping I've ever had from Vanishing. And no, I didn't select expedited at all, just the regular free VI+ shipping like usual. I almost threw my back out lifting the box too, holy crap that thing was heavy. When I opened it though, my oh my.

MAGIC and Joshua Jay

A little background here, for those who aren't familiar. Talk About Tricks is a less of a curated selection of tricks and, instead, every Talk About Tricks column from MAGIC, a magic magazine that discontinued in 2016, that Joshua Jay was the writer for. His tenure lasted from 2001 through 2013, and this book includes every single one of them!

The column was one where magicians could submit close-up magic tricks and, if they were selected, they would be published. Each issue contained an average of between 4 to 6 routines. 12 years. Wow!

On the product page for the book(s), it says that there were 144 issues. And that's semi-accurate, except they included two additional issues in the book - March 2001 and September 2016. The March 2001 issue, Joshua Jay was a guest-writer for the column via Stan Allen. In 2016 when Stan Allen decided to stop the magazine, he asked Jay back again to write the final column. So, 146 issues!

Ah, but let's talk about Joshua Jay a tiny bit. In the book, like the magazine, you'll see his mugshot at the beginning of every issue. He grows through the years, and you see it. He started out writing for the column at age 18! Whoa! I didn't know that, nor did I ever think about it. When I got back into magic, his name was just one of the ones everyone knew. Unfortunately, as he covers in the Introduction, he did cop quite a bit of flack for it. I understand to a point. If you think about it, kids aren't really the ones subscribing to magic magazines en masse -- it's the older group. And here's this teen, fresh out of high school, writing in every issue.

I'm glad to see that he was able to stick to it and from skimming some of the months over the years, I can see how the public grew up with him.

One thing that this book has that the magazine also had, and this is kind of a downside, is the gaff pages. Like the "tear out these pages, make copies of them, and do the routine" type of gaff pages. In the Introduction, Jay does admit that some of these didn't hold up well -- but at least with a magazine we would have been able to try. There's no way I'm ripping a page out of this book. What would have been nice is if Vanishing Inc. supplied a PDF of all of those pages that we could print separately. I'm sending them a support inquiry as we speak =]

The Longest Table of Contents and the Best Index I've Ever Seen

That pretty much sums it up, but I'll elaborate for fun anyways.

The table of contents is 30 pages long. Thirty. Three-Zero. It spans from page V to page XXXV. That's "vee" to "ex ex ex vee", for those of you who speak Roman.

It's very, very nicely formatted too. Broken out by issue, it has the routine, the author(s), the diamond-rated difficulty, and the page. For everything. Holy smokes. I've never thought I would ever be flipping through a book's table of contents and wonder "jeez, when will it end" -- but it happened! Luckily, only the first volume contains the contents. The page numbers span both books, and they're properly continuous. So that's nice.

If you're interested in seeing the Contents in all its glory, I typed it all here: Talk About Tricks - Contents.

But let's talk about that Index for a hot minute. It starts on page 1255 and ends on the last page, 1294. Oh, wow, it's longer than the Contents!

When I was typing the contents out, I had a fun thought. I would, after finished, get some stats on how many different authors there were and how many of each trick type there were. You know, fun math. And then, I came to the Index at the very end of Volume Two. Why I didn't flip to it when I first got the books, no idea. But here I was, the last minute of typing and before me was the holy grail of indexes.

It has four sections:

• By Creator
  • This section lists each author, in alphabetical order (by last name... including Anonymous), and all the routines they submitted over the years.
• By Category
  • This section lists every category of routine that exists in the two volumes which include Bar Magic, Bills, Business Cards, Cards, Card Boxes, Classics, Coins, Cups & Balls, Gambling, Impromptu Tricks, Misc., Parlour/Stage, Sandwiches, Two-Card Transpos, and Walkaround Routines! And yes, a trick can be in multiple categories -- and quite a few are.
• Expert Talks
  • Each and every Expert Talk article, alphabetical by talk title.
• Yearly Top Ten Picks
  • A list of every year that Joshua Jay printed a "Top Ten", and which routines were selected. This one's handy as a reference since they aren't in all of the years.

They really could have just cut it cheap and listed each trick by page number in the Index, but they went what I would say is the extra mile here. I was kind of dreading having to do all of that on my own just so I could have a better reference and heck if I'm not super happy that I don't have to! I might retype the By Category one, since that's useful to have (and because I can easily generate the other three from the content I already entered). We'll see.

Typos and All

Ah, what book doesn't have a classic typo. And what almost-1300-page book isn't full of them! So, from what I can tell, the individual issues are just reprints from the books themselves. If there was a typo there, and there were, they're in the book too. I cracked open two separate MAGIC Magazine issues to confirm and sure enough, it was the same. So, old typo is the same typo.

That leaves us with only the Introduction and Index really... oh, and the Contents. There are one or two typos in the Contents, surprisingly. I really would have figured that they would either catch it while typing it, or in editing. Some of the tricks were misspelled, like May 2006's Illegallly Yours -- notice the extra "l"? But hey, I digress. How many people are really going to go through the Contents like I did?

Though, up above, when I mentioned the bonus March 2001 issue, the Contents section has a slight typo and lists it as March 2011. This threw me for a loop because, when I first read it, I was thinking "hey, wait, did they print two issues in March 2011?!" But no, it was actually 2001.  Actually, that one is a big typo. Literally. It's a big font, and bold.

Also up above in the MAGIC and Joshua Jay section, I mentioned how the product page (e.g., the website selling the book) said there were 144 issues, but it really comes out to 146. Well, also on the product page it says that the book contains 868 tricks. Here, I find a bit of a negative discrepancy. If we go by the individual submissions themselves, there are roughly 692 tricks -- not including the Expert Talk articles. There are 75 of those, which still doesn't bring the total up to 868. My guess, and it's a pure guess, is that some of the routines contain multiple tricks? That or, and this is more likely, it was a typo because the actual number of routines plus Expert Talk articles comes out to 767, which is fairly close to 868 on the number pad =P

I'm going to be honest, at this number of tricks, it doesn't matter. With 1294 pages, there's so much content here that it was a bit overwhelming when I first started going through it. Now, I can't get enough! But as far as typos go, that's 100 tricks off which could be considered false advertising.

Takeaways

This book's price tag is, currently, set at $250. While enough to gain free shipping from just about every seller, it's still $250 and that's not cheap. The books together are also heavy as hell -- I think I saw someone on Instagram weigh them and they're around 11.5lbs (and they feel like it too)!

But let's get one thing straight, you're getting way more material than what you're paying for. In this book are magic tricks and articles from almost 150 magazine issues. How much would it have cost to buy each issue individually, or to have been a subscriber for the 12 years these books span? How much would it cost to buy separate books from each of the magicians that submitted tricks that are in Talk About Tricks? I know, right? $250 is starting to look a lot less expensive now!

Now, I have all the MAGIC Magazine issues, thanks to my Genii subscription. I have even scrolled through a few. It in no way compares to holding this book in my hands and flipping through the pages. It's the same material but collected. It's easier to digest and to see how routines build from issue to issue. To call back to the Table of Contents and Index, holy smokes is it convenient the way everything is nicely packaged.

The book's cover, and even dust jacket, are nicely designed. They look like they belong on a magician's shelf, or table for that matter. The material for the pages is pristine. The binding is extra tough. These are built to be used, and I for one will use them.

Now, my only real complaint -- ignoring the typos -- is that Joshua Jay didn't provide any extra commentary or annotations. Sure, I get it. This is just a collection of all of the printings he was the writer for but wouldn't it have been cool for issues here and there for him to have dropped in another paragraph with a "lol, I was up until 3am writing this because I had to study for a midterm that night" or a "hey, this guy also published a book that built off of these ideas - check it out here". Hmm... maybe I'll do a follow-up with some annotations myself =]

I want, no, I need to say thank you. Thank you, Joshua Jay, for working on this and putting it out. Thank you for all the time you put into writing the column over the years and continuing to make the magic community a better place. I'm very happy I picked up this book (or, these books). For anyone else reading this, if you're a book collector or a magician of any level, I do think that you'll be quite happy investing in them too.

To order your own, head on over to Vanishing Inc. and smash that "add to cart" button!

What does the title have to do with today's post? Find out below!

I'm skipping the normal Monday Mail Call, not because I don't have any deliveries (I have a lot actually), but because I felt like writing a general brain dump. You see, I've been reading a lot this past week. Obviously, Talk About Tricks is at the top of the list. I've really been doing a lot more analyzing of that book that reading, but I have finally started flipping through the pages too. As for actual reading and processing, I'm still in 2001 so I have quite a bit more to go through. Soon, real soon, I'll have the info for the book added to the site -- it's a huge 2-volume set and I've typed a lot already, but it'll be worth it.

Besides that giant amount of material, I'm also still going through The Buena Vista Shuffle Club and Less is More. I had shelved the latter for a while because I got a little peeved that Earl was only slightly tweaking the display of each routine and calling it a new routine entirely, but getting past that, the content of the book is amazing. And yes, at my table I do have all of these books out, and a notebook, and I'm going through them back-to-back -- with a deck of cards in my hands, no less!

One of the Discord groups I'm in is The People's Palace of Prestidigitation, which you can access yourself here: https://discord.gg/NfZc9zU

Each month, Dr Mex DD PhD (the... creator / leader of the thing) puts on a competition. I always like fun competitions, and this monthly adventure sounds pretty fun. He poses a topic, or specific routine type, gives different conditions, and folks have to record a trick meeting the criteria. Easy peasy, right?

This month's competition is all about paper bags, to celebrate the paper bag manufacturing machine's patent date of July 12th, 1859. Coincidentally, I've recently purchased a large number of paper bags to work on a routine I learned from David Regal. I haven't practiced the routine yet, but I have until the end of the month to try it out and get something uploaded -- so that's cool! Though, there will be bonus points given if I can get it done before the 15th... hmm.

The above challenge reminds me of The Hermit's July Challenge, to take a photo of an impossible thing.

My first thought for this was an "impossible bottle." Unfortunately, I feel like that's way too cliché. Also, I don't own one. Ironically though, I have actually gone to the store to look for bottles to make my own -- completely unrelated to this monthly challenge. I thought it would be neat to try my hand at getting a deck of cards into a bottle. Why? No idea. Maybe I'll do one of those long-term type of tricks and get someone to sign a card in a routine now, put it reversed in the deck (in the bottle), then in a few years, force the same card and have them sign it and let them smash the bottle. That would probably get some applause.

Ah, but yeah, I do have another idea for it though. I have always had a fascination with impossibly balancing a card on the tip of my finger. Thanks to Talk About Tricks, I now also know how to do it with a tuck! Maybe that'll be my photo entry. It's not a "thing," but it is kind of? The rules are fuzzy, so we'll see =P

Ah, that brings us back to the title of today's post. It really has nothing to do with the post other than it meets the theme of "brain dump" -- just came out of the ol' noodle while trying to think up a clever title. I'll let you know when I eventually come up with a good one =P

It was August, 2020. It was hot out, so I was indoors, scrolling Instagram when in my feed appeared a post by Aaron Fisher (@aaronfishermagic):

I mean, wow. A fancy looking deck of cards, a wad of cash, and a name I've heard of. Count me in! This is a Kickstarter campaign that I'll definitely jump on.

The Campaign

The campaign itself was in fact for the deck, it is the CC Club Playing Cards, the CC standing for "Conjuror Community". Ah, but it was for a little bit more than that:

Heck yeah! But wait, there's more! There were live events, the Pandemonium Vanishing Deck trick, and also the Aaron Fisher Card Magic Collection. That collection is 6 different video lectures, which is pretty sweet.

What's more sweet is this though -- for $85, I got 6 of the CC Club decks, the Pandemonium trick, unlimited access to the "Out of the Box Experience" online site (which has a ton of videos and lectures), access to the live events when they were going on in the beginning, and also those 6 lectures from Aaron Fisher. That is a pretty great deal if you ask me. It didn't hurt that the deck was pretty good too ;)

The Paper Engine Update

But wait, there's even more!!!

Have you ever heard of the book The Paper Engine, by Aaron Fisher? He, and John Lovick, published it back in 2002. It's 126 pages, hardcover, and has 50 or so card magic sleights and routines. If you're lucky enough to find a copy of it, it's often $150+. Yikes...

Though, technically, you can download a PDF of it from Aaron Fisher's website for a low, low price of $24.95. Hmm...

So, back to that Kickstarter campaign. One of the stretch goals was a 20th anniversary, new and improved version of The Paper Engine. They offered both hardcover and paperback editions, the only difference was the addon cost of $88 vs $38, respectably. I'm known to be a book collector, so of course I smashed that "add on" button and chose hardcover.

I was excited, the community was excited, we were all just super excited!!!

The Pinky Promise

September 10th, 2020, 21 days after its launch, the campaign ended after receiving over $140k -- the goal was $5k!

The first main update that all of us backers received at the end of the campaign included this paragraph regarding The Paper Engine:

That makes sense. Decks are quicker to print than a book is to write and publish. I was cool with waiting -- half a year, that's not terrible. Oh, if only I knew.

Here is a quick view of each update, as they provided them to us:

In March, 2021, we received the next update. Unfortunately, it let us know that the original target of Spring 2021 wasn't happening. Unforeseen delays and whatnot. But they were still working on it "diligently" and would announce a shipping date asap.

July 27th, 2021:

September 16th, 2021:

November 23rd, 2021's update reiterated that they're still working on editing the final piece of writing... I'm no editor, but that must be a huge piece of writing to spend more than 2 months on.

March 2nd, 2022:

Yup, that's right. They're leaving us pretty high-and-dry with the good ol' "sorry, no updates, check back again later" routine. If you think about it, it's just like a real magic trick -- they asked someone to borrow a $20 bill, and forgot to return it. Hopefully it doesn't show up inside a lemon =/

At this rate, if they were to announce "all work's done" this week, we might actually receive it on the 2-year mark after we paid for it. And, it's called the 20th Anniversary edition so hey, 2022's the year right?

It's Monday and you know what that means... Monday Mail Call!

Each Monday (give or take), I use this feature to highlight a few of the things that have made their way in over the past week or so. Packages, purchases, and emails -- oh my!

The past few days, I received enough reading material to keep me busy for quite a while. Magazine and newsletter subscriptions arrived in my inbox, and a book set that weighs enough to use in a bodybuilding routine. Speaking of magazines, I haven't received July's Genii issue yet so that's another one to look forward too -- likely this week, but we'll see. The notification of the digital version came out, looks like it'll feature Juan Pablo! I don't know who that is, if I'm being honest so it'll be a learning experience either way.

Up first for things that I did receive this week, the July issue of The Hermit landed smack dab in my Spam folder, so I didn't see it until the 2nd after I started criticizing them for missing the due date =P.

Before even getting into the e-zine itself, Scott Baird switched things up a bit and made the content summary in the email smaller and more compact. Oddly enough, I like it a lot more! I'm a big fan of being verbose, but that's what the e-zine is for -- the sneak peek / index should be just a title or two. Change, approved =]

In this issue, which I've only flipped through briefly, we have effects by Scott Baird, Luka Krastashvili, Kyle Leon, Fritz Alkemade, Patrik Kuffs, and Rudy Tinoco!

Cryptic, by Kyle Leon, looks right up my alley too. It's a card trick but has way more to it than that. Like, there are cutouts. And hidden messages. Is it a card trick, or espionage?! Yes. Yes, it is.

The monthly challenge, #hermitmagicchallenge, is being continued from last month. A picture of an impossible thing. Interesting... I've been meaning to participate, maybe this will be the month. Though, I'm not immediately thinking of anything "impossible" that wouldn't be mistaken as a simple camera trick. I guess I need to expand my mind a bit.

There are several card tricks, and a trick with a paper bag in this issue. Sankey also makes an appearance again in this month's Sankey Says. It looks like a pretty good issue.

Up next is Love Letters #2, the 2021 monthly magazine from Andy Lastname (i.e., thejerx.com). I must have gotten to the email a minute or two too late because in it, Andy announced a sale of two books (only one copy of each), one of which was Here Be Bunnies -- a book I've had my eye on, but nobody sells -- and they were both sold out. That made me sad =[

I've skimmed through the 20-page issue, unfortunately there's no index or table of contents to give a heads up as to what's covered so to get the goods, you have to give the time. But yeah, there looks like there's a gaff card trick included, a response or two to community questions, and a review of some sort. I'm sure I got at least half of that wrong and summarized even worse, but if there's anything neat in it I'll make sure to drop a note on the site after going through it.

And finally, let's Talk About Tricks. Seriously though, let's talk about two books. These gigantic volumes, One and Two, make up the entire Talk About Tricks book. Or, set? The Table of Contents is included in Volume One and takes up 30 pages alone; it also includes the pages for items included in Volume Two. They are also sold together, not as separate volumes, so my thought is that it was just impossible to make a single book to hold all the information. And wow is there a lot of info. Joshua Jay really outdid himself with this one!

Over 1000 pages between the two books, including all the tricks from the MAGIC magazine columns over the years. I have a digital copy of all of MAGIC too, but I really dislike reading books and magazines on a screen (lol at the first 2 things in today's Mail Call =P), so I've only used them when something else references them. These two books though, it just feels likes something that much more amazing.

I've flipped through and stopped on a page or two, I'm damn excited to sit down with these and give them a proper read. It's definitely too much to do my normal word-for-word, cover-to-cover read, but we'll see. I'm ignoring my current queue and starting on it right away because, again, I'm just excited for it! I will be posting a more in-depth feature for this one real soon too, so if you're interested in more than keep an eye out.

There's so much reading this week, I'm pretty sure it's going to take me quite a while to get through it all. I wonder how many decks I'll wear out while reading Talk About Tricks?

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.

If you've followed me on Instagram for any amount of time, you'll have noticed my large collection of playing cards. While I'm entering them all onto this site too, it's a slow and lengthy process. Right now, I've entered around 45 decks' information -- and I have a few hundred more to go.

And... there are more on their way to my house as we speak. And... more pending Kickstarter campaigns that have already funded, or are fast on their way to it. And... we can't forget the deck subscriptions. And random impulse purchases because, why not?

While I would love to say I'm decked out and am buying no more, let's face it -- I'll probably buy more. However, in the past couple of months I've noticed that I not only have been slowing down my purchases, I have also consciously abandoned my shopping carts while decks are in them, saying to myself, "wait, I don't need these."

Thinking about it more, it really just boils down to the fact that there are too many new decks being released, way too frequently.

Subscriptions, and Kickstarter

I have two playing card subscriptions right now, Kings Wild Project and Jocu Playing Cards. For KWP, I actually have two subscriptions -- one for their Table Players, and one for the No. 13 Club. For Jocu, I only have the one subscription. All-in-all, throughout the course of the year I am receiving at least 22 decks through these. I say "at least" because I don't fully understand the release cadence for Jocu, I just know that I receive at least one deck every few months from them.

22 decks per year is enough, right? That's almost 2 per month to destroy play with. Well... about that.

I have "Superbacker" status on Kickstarter. What does that mean? Nothing... except I back a lot of projects on their platform. Like, that's it. No fancy profile page. No cool badge. No private launches or discount codes or anything. Oh wait that's not true, I do get a little badge:

That appears on my Kickstarter "About" page... yay =P

So far in 2022, I have backed 13 successful playing card campaigns (and 9 others that either failed or were cancelled). When backing campaigns, I rarely go for the "single deck" option; yes, I'm there to get a deck that I like, but I am also there to help support the campaign, so I tend to go a little higher up in the tiers.

Even if we assumed I went with the single deck option, given we're only halfway through the year so far and I've already backed 13, if the trend were to continue that would be a total of 26 decks throughout the whole year (math: 1 deck per campaign x 13 campaigns every 6 months = 26 decks per year). Now, that's 26 more decks... in addition to the 22 I'm already receiving throughout the year. Yikes!

And let's ignore the routine releases by Organic Playing Cards, Joker and the Thief, Theory 11, Ellusionist (especially their monthly Mystery Deck), Art of Play's annual Mystery Deck sale, etc. Yeah, can you see how I easily receive at least 100 new decks a year? In actuality, it's closer to double that.

Price Check

A theme I've noticed lately is the increase in deck prices in Kickstarter campaigns. It used to be $10 a deck, then it jumped up to $12. Now, for the past few months, I'm seeing a single deck clock in at $15?! And then, $5 shipping... uhm, excuse me?

Theory 11 and Ellusionist have kept their prices nice, and Art of Play has always been a little boutique-priced (e.g., expensive), but these smaller-batched companies are really crushing my desire to want to buy more decks. While I love J&T decks, the price range is between $15 and $25 per deck, not including their $52 gilded specials. It's almost worth buying a brick so I can lock in a discount... except the shipping cost blows that away too.

Manufacturing Delays, lol

One thing I find really funny is that there are so many new and custom decks being created today that the printers like USPCC and EPCC are so backed up that they are all being delayed. It will really suck if we create such a big demand for cards from these printers right now that they buy additional equipment and hire more staff, only to have to reverse all of it once the custom card market bubble pops. Hopefully that doesn't happen, of course, but the fact that there are so many decks coming out all at once, it sure feels like it will.

For some numbers, I took a quick look at Kickstarter and right now there are exactly 80 active "playing card" campaigns. Yes, this includes Tarot cards and a few custom card games, but scrolling through it looks like there's around 50 new decks. Several are already funded too! Holy smokes that's a lot of new decks...

To resell, or not resell -- that is the question.

I have... a lot of decks. I make it a point that I'm not a collector and I will open any of my decks and play with the cards inside, but honestly, I just have too many of them to be able to do that. I don't want to open a deck just for the sake of keeping my word -- I really want to play with the deck.

If I have multiple of a deck, and often I do, what happens if I don't end up liking the deck? If the artwork doesn't vibe with me, or the quality of the cardstock is meh? Sure, I could practice things like folding cards or making gaffs... or, maybe I could try selling those extra unopened decks?

A friend of mine said that he always buys a brick to get a discount, sometimes it comes out to like $9 a deck when a single deck runs about $12 -- and usually hits the "free shipping" price too. That's not too terrible. Except, he then resells 10 of the decks for $12 which ends up covering the cost he paid for the whole brick. In other words, with a little bit of "work" he would get 2 decks for free. The fact that he sells the decks for the price a person would have paid for it anyways is kind of appealing, and makes it sound more morally right. On the other hand, I've never been a fan of those who try to buy out the stock with the intent to resell it to make a profit.

My idea, of reselling my decks, is not to make a profit but to free up space in my ever-shrinking closet and hopefully not lose a ton of money in the process. Sure, some decks might actually sell for more than what I originally paid for them if I opted to go the eBay auction route. Or maybe they'll sell for a lot less. I remember seeing that Cybernetic deck originally sell on eBay for a few hundred bucks when it came out last fall -- I recently saw that same deck go for $0.99! What a gamble =P

But then again, there's a lot of work involved in selling decks. Maybe I'll just stop buying new ones until I've used all these old ones.