Magic supplies in Lancaster, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Lancaster County runs on hospitality: farm-to-table restaurants downtown, banquet halls, and a tourist trade that fills hotels from spring to Christmas. That makes table-hopping one of the most bookable forms of magic here. It needs effects that reset fast and play to people sitting down: a chop cup with chop cup balls, sponge balls, and a deck that does the work. Our guide to building a close-up set covers how to order them. See close-up magic.

Living near a full-time magic theatre is rare, and it is worth using. A dinner-show stage teaches pacing, music cues and how illusion acts move a whole room, all things video flattens. Go more than once and watch the audience, not the stage. If the parlour and stage side appeals, start with classics that read at distance: the Linking Rings — Set of Four, the Appearing Cane — Metal and Performance Silks. The stage magic collection has the rest.

Put the swap meet in your diary. It runs on a Saturday in spring at Zion Lutheran Church on Quarry Road in Leola, entry is free, and the people behind the tables are professional and semi-professional entertainers who will tell you what is worth owning. Earlier editions drew about forty magicians and a couple of hundred visitors.

For your first purchases, keep it small: one self-working deck and one close-up prop. Our article on the best magic tricks for beginners explains why. Start from the beginner collection.

We found no year-round walk-in magic shop in Lancaster city that we could confirm as trading. The best local place to buy in person is the annual swap meet in Leola, where used props, books and gimmicks change hands between performers; souvenir and novelty shops along Route 30 sell trick kits aimed at visitors.

For new props, most Lancaster magicians order online. Our listings say what is in the box, whether instructions are included and how much practice the effect takes, so you can judge it without handling it first.

Corporate dinners in the county's conference hotels and wedding barns favour short, personal pieces that leave guests talking. Mentalism does that better than anything: a Mental Die — Brass, a set of forcing dice or a PK ring creates a moment that belongs to one guest. Read our mentalism versus traditional magic to see which suits you, then browse mentalism.

Lancaster sits between Reading, about forty minutes north-east, and Harrisburg and York to the west. Philadelphia is about ninety minutes east, with a much larger scene, and Allentown is reachable for a day. The swap meet draws entertainers from several states, which says something about how central Lancaster County is. See magic in Pennsylvania.

We send orders to every address in Lancaster city and across Lancaster County, from Lititz and Ephrata to Strasburg and Paradise, on the same terms as anywhere in the United States. Most of the range ships from our supplier, so we don't quote a delivery date. See shipping and returns and refunds.