The effects
Magic tricks, explained from the front
What each classic effect looks like to the person watching it, where it came from, and how long it really takes to learn. We never print a method — what we can tell you is which of these is worth your next month, and what you need to own to do it.
Magic tricks for beginners
Effects that work the week you buy them. The prop does the heavy lifting, so the only thing left to practice is what you say while it happens.
Appearance
Appearing Flowers
A bouquet that was not there a second ago — spring flowers that fill a hand, or a bare stick that blooms along its length.
The effect, and the 2 props →Transformation
Bounce / No Bounce Balls
Two balls that look identical. One bounces to the ceiling and the other hits the floor dead — and they swap over in a spectator's hands.
The effect, and the prop →Card Effect
Collectible Playing Cards
Decks bought to be looked at rather than played with — foil, transparency, custom courts — and the overlap between collecting them and performing with them.
The effect, and the 5 props →Restoration
Cut and Restored Rope
A length of rope is cut cleanly in half in front of everyone, the ends are tied, and the rope comes back whole — with the knot removed last.
The effect, and the 2 props →Prediction
Forcing Dice
Dice that land on the number you need. A prediction written before anything is thrown, matched by a roll the spectator makes themselves.
The effect, and the 3 props →Appearance
Sponge Balls
A small red ball is placed in the spectator's own closed fist. When they open it there are two — the effect that happens in someone else's hand rather than yours.
The effect, and the 4 props →Appearance
The Appearing Cane
A walking cane arrives in an empty hand with a crack like a whip — the fastest production in magic and the standard opener for a century.
The effect, and the 3 props →Vanish
The Ball and Vase
A small ball in a turned wooden or brass vase vanishes, returns, and changes place — the prop that has been in beginners' boxed sets for over a century.
The effect, and the 2 props →Vanish
The Card Box
A small hinged box that vanishes a signed card, produces one, or changes it for another — a utility prop that ends routines cleanly.
The effect, and the prop →Transformation
The Change Bag
A cloth bag on a handle that turns one thing into another, or produces what was never in it — the workhorse of children's and parlour magic.
The effect, and the 3 props →Appearance
The Dove Pan
A pan is shown empty, something is burned in it, the lid goes on — and what comes out is alive, or at least was never going to fit.
The effect, and the 3 props →Mind Reading
The Marked Deck
A deck whose backs quietly say what the faces are — the tool that lets you do things nobody can reconstruct afterwards.
The effect, and the 2 props →Card Effect
The Stripper Deck
A deck tapered down one edge so a reversed card can be found by touch — the workhorse gaff that does a dozen tricks and asks almost nothing.
The effect, and the 3 props →Card Effect
The Svengali Deck
A spectator names a card, the deck is riffled to show every card different, and the named one is the only one there — the trick deck that has sold at fairgrounds for a century.
The effect, and the 4 props →Vanish
The Thumb Tip
The most useful object in magic and the one most often bought and abandoned — a silk pushed into a fist that is afterwards empty.
The effect, and the 3 props →
Intermediate effects
Months rather than days. These reward real practice and punish the lack of it, usually in front of somebody.
Vanish
Cups and Balls
Three cups, a few small balls, and the oldest routine in conjuring — balls vanish, travel between cups, and finish under something far too large to have been hidden.
The effect, and the 4 props →Appearance
Silk Magic
Squares of fine silk produced from nowhere, vanished, knotted, coloured and changed — the material that makes stage production possible.
The effect, and the 3 props →Appearance
The Chop Cup
One cup instead of three. A ball vanishes and returns under it repeatedly, and the finish is something that could never have fitted.
The effect, and the 3 props →Penetration
The Linking Rings
Solid metal rings knock together, pass through one another, and hang linked in a chain — then come apart and are handed out.
The effect, and the 2 props →Mentalism
The PK Ring
An ordinary-looking finger ring that makes borrowed metal behave strangely — a utility prop for mentalism rather than a trick of its own.
The effect, and the prop →
Advanced sleight of hand
A year is a normal answer. Nothing in this group can be bought your way out of — the apparatus is the easy part.
Coin Effect
Coins Across
Four coins travel one at a time from one hand to the other, with both hands otherwise empty and the coins counted out loud at every stage.
The effect, and the 3 props →Levitation
The Floating Card
A single playing card rises, turns and hovers between the hands — the smallest levitation in magic and the one most often attempted outdoors by mistake.
The effect, and the 2 props →