On buying magic stuff...

 

I have this longstanding theory about magic dealers. I think they prefer dealing with "magic enthusiasts*" more than magicians.

At this point, some definitions are in order. A "magic enthusiast" is NOT a professional or even a semi-professional magician. He (or she, but probably a he**) is someone who likes magic tricks and likes the air of mystique they might lend him. Perhaps he wants some magic tricks to pick up girls or entertain the grandchildren or to do a set at the company picnic. And so they go to the magic dealer for a few modestly priced easy-to-do miracles.

The magic enthusiast is an easy sell. The professional magician is not. I have spent hours in magic stores, undoubtedly boring the proprietor as I searched for something that "fit my style." I reject most of the magic I see - not because I don't think it's great (for much of it is) but because it doesn't suit my personality.

I think most pros (and semi-pros) are impossibly picky like me, and so we irritate the people who run magic shops. Indeed, whenever I go inside a brick and mortar magic store, my first thought is "whoever is behind the counter will not like me."

Well brick and mortar magic stores are disappearing faster than you can say "female magician." COVID killed some of them but the internet did the most damage. Penguin Magic, the online juggernaut of magic dealers, now has a stranglehold on the market and I do much of my shopping from them.

And yes, I think about the magician I used to be - the naive 11-year-old who believed that the more stuff from Magic Inc he had in his bedroom, the closer he was to becoming the next David Copperfield. I remember working a summer job one year and investing all of my savings in a Magic Inc order. I bought about a dozen tricks and one of them - the now unfortunately discontinued Harrison's Silk Blow - is still a staple of my act.

Now, when I place a magic order, it is not to build my act but to augment it. I find that these days, I spend most of my magic budget on refills and replacement props. For example, my recent Penguin order consisted of:

- One TT*** 

- 20 9-inch white silks

That's it.

I should, however, note that this year, I DID buy a new trick. When I saw Hernan Maccagno's excellent coin routine on Penn & Teller's Fool Us, I knew that I had to learn it. That is a rarity for me since I don't do much coin magic, but this routine spoke to me so powerfully and, while watching it, I very quickly thought of my own unique presentation for it. I have been working on it regularly over the past few months and practising it is a joy.

A link to the routine below: 

Just a shoutout to my fellow magicians - wondering if they notice their own magic store purchases changed since now and when they started out. 

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 * When I was a young magician in Calgary, it became urgent for "us pros" to differential between magic enthusiasts and the real deal (which, we presumed, to be us.) In retrospect, these semantic gymnastics we employed did nothing but artificially build up our already fragile self esteem.

** The South African-born magician Gabriella Lester was so bemused by people's insistence on referring to her a "female magician" rather than just a magician that she procured some baseball caps with the legend MALE MAGICIAN on the front. It was a subtle battle cry; she noted that male magicians are never singled out for their gender while women are. Fine. I will be a soldier in her army.

***Magicians know