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EndersGame Inner circle Reviewer EndersGame 2195 Posts |
Many years ago, I learned a trick with a dissolving card effect, and for the life of me I can't remember the name of the trick, or the source where I learned it. The effect goes like this: the spectator selects a card, which is placed on top of the deck. The deck is placed under a cloth above a bowl of water, and through the cloth the spectator grabs his card from the top of the deck, while the deck is removed. Holding his card through the cloth, the spectator then physically places his card into the water, but when the cloth is removed, the card has visibly disappeared/dissolved. The effect can be truly astounding and memorable, and I have people asking me about it years after I performed it. Can anyone point me in the direction as to the original name or the source of this effect? It involved a transparent plastic gaffe.
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Spellbinder Inner circle The Holy City of East Orange, NJ 6438 Posts |
This sounds similar to the vanishing coin trick which was performed with a feke made of glass, and found its way into many a beginner's magic set before the country became law-suit mad and manufacturers had to worry about little Billy or Betsy getting cut on broken glass. I have never heard of this being done with a card before, but there is no reason why it wouldn't work and a plastic feke would solve the problem of broken glass.
Professor Spellbinder
Professor Emeritus at the Turkey Buzzard Academy of Magik, Witchcraft and Wizardry http://www.magicnook.com Publisher of The Wizards' Journals |
EndersGame Inner circle Reviewer EndersGame 2195 Posts |
With a little more research, I managed to track down one source describing the effect. It's called "The Dissolved Card" in The Art of Magic by T. Nelson Downs, which was first published in 1906.
Interestly, in describing the effect, Downs mentions "the dissolving coin" mentioned by the previous poster. Downs calls it "a popular parlour trick, in spite of the fact that it has been explained in a thousand and one treatises on conjuring and in every juvenile paper or magazine. Time was when the amateur or professional magician never thought of going abroad without his glass disc, in order that he might be prepared to perform this trick at a moment's notice." T. Nelson Downs' description of "the Dissolved Card" has a slightly different handling than how I learned it, mind you, so the the source that I came across twenty years ago must be a different one. |
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