Magic supplies in Sioux City, Woodbury and Plymouth counties, Iowa

A lot of paid magic in Sioux City happens at a table: a company holiday dinner, a wedding reception in a hall off Gordon Drive, a fundraiser where you walk between rounds of eight. Those rooms want something that reads from across the table and resets in seconds. The chop cup has done that job for a century; a ball appears and vanishes under a single cup, and the finish can be anything you can fit inside it. Pair it with sponge balls, which multiply in the spectator's own hand, and you have ten minutes of strolling material that fits in a jacket pocket. Our close-up collection lists what ships now.

Sioux City audiences are friendly and quick to heckle in the same breath, which is a good reason to start with a deck that does the hard work for you. The Svengali deck lets a spectator name any card and still find it, with no sleight of hand to learn. Once that feels easy, the Marked Deck — Reader Back opens up routines where you name a card nobody has shown you. Both come with performance rights only; the routine you build around them is your own. The card magic collection has the rest.

Go and watch the club first. Its public shows at the Betty Strong Encounter Center are free, and you will see what a room of ordinary Siouxland families and adults actually reacts to, which is rarely the trick a beginner would pick. Membership information comes through the club's contact; ask before you turn up to a meeting.

Then buy small. One deck, one set of sponge balls and a close-up mat will occupy a winter. Our guide to the best magic tricks for beginners explains why most first purchases end up in a drawer, and the beginner collection is built around the ones that don't.

We found no walk-in magic shop in Sioux City or anywhere in Woodbury County. Party and costume stores carry novelty tricks, which are made to be opened once, not performed for years.

That leaves buying online, here or elsewhere. Our listings say what comes in the box, whether instructions come with it and roughly how much practice an effect needs, because you can't pick it up first. If you want to see a prop worked before you buy, ask a club member at one of the shows.

Sioux City's work spreads across the rivers into South Sioux City in Nebraska and North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes in South Dakota, so performers here routinely play three states in a month. Ninety minutes north, Sioux Falls is the largest city in reach; about an hour and a half south down I-29 is Omaha, where the Omaha Magical Society runs a free monthly session. Council Bluffs sits across the river from it. For the rest of the state, see magic in Iowa.

The Orpheum on Pierce Street was built in 1927 for the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, the same circuit that once carried touring magicians from city to city. It closed in 1992, was restored from 1999 and reopened in September 2001, and now books Broadway tours and the Sioux City Symphony into its 2,690 seats. Touring magic acts that play the Midwest come through rooms like it. If you are building a stage act, the stage magic collection carries apparatus such as the Linking Rings — Stage Set of Six, which read from the back of a theatre in a way cards never will.

We send orders to every address in Sioux City, across Woodbury and Plymouth counties, and over the rivers into Nebraska and South Dakota, on the same terms as the rest of the United States. Most of the range ships from our supplier, so we don't quote a delivery date; order well ahead of a booked show. Unopened items can come back within 30 days of delivery. Read shipping and returns and refunds for the detail.