Hi again Medric, thanks for the call. Just an update, I know you guys where concerned about mom, but some good news, she's back from the hospital. She went to the emergency by ambulance just a little while ago again, but shes back, and doing fine.
About the crack whipping, sounds pretty cool. I can't wait to see it. If you need some whipping practice, I'm sure my brothers would be more than happy to volunteer.
See you later.

Cory, great to hear your mom is doing better. My thoughts and prayers are with you guys. Will call her tommorrow to catch up.

As for whipping your brothers, well that depends.... butif you aren't cracking good grades, then I may use you for target practice.(LOL) See you at the magic club next week.....

No, of course not. Even if they had a lifetime guarantee, if it was like other lifetime guarantees, allowing your kids to play with them would probably void it as being excessive abuse.

When Dave says:

he is not necessarily indicating that ANY set will last you a lifetime. However, if you take a quick trip through my museum, you will see what happens to a set of cups when it is used under real world conditions. Take a look at the set of cups Gazzo used -- that copper PF/DD set. The same set right now would cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $1200 or more. They just aren't making any more of those. (These are the cups SeaDawg was referring to as having been in the ocean.)

Similar cups from Jim Riser or RnT II will run in the neighborhood of $375 - $450.00. And they will probably dent after a few trips to the ground and a few swats with a wand. Compare that to the cups Gary Animal used. They have been beat upon quite vigorously, but they aren't dented, just scratched. Those Gary Animal cups are made of very thick, hard copper.

Contrast this to the Penguin cups. They are not as heavy. The Animal cups, which are smaller, actually weigh about 2 ounces more per cup. Some of the others in the line weigh almost twice as much -- nearly 14 ounces. This thicker metal will take more of a beating.

So, if you buy 2 sets of the Penguin cups, you may or may not be making a good decision. If you batter one set in a week, then you may get two week's use out of the cups. You will be out almost the cost of a set of better cups.

On the other hand, if you aren't ready to shell out a lot of money for a set of cups, get what you can afford. But get the BEST you can afford. Don't settle for less.

A lot of money is wasted by having to replace props that didn't last as long as you needed for them to.

And I wouldn't let kids play with any set of cups I used to earn a living.

Since one of the world's foremsost cup gurus has just weighed in on the subject this should be given some serious weight.

I do not let anyone "play" with my props. Often if I have a request between shows to "borrow" a deck of cards, I keep a couple of spares in my kit for those occasions. I never let my working material be used.

When I was younger and worked in a lumber camp, there was an old joke. There are two things in life you don't ask to borrow... a man's chainsaw and a man's wife. If desperate, you might consider asking for the wife....

Moral of story.... don't ask to touch the tools of a man's trade. It is very bad form...

I need to correct something I said about the Riser street cups and the RnT 2 street cups. They are made of very heavy copper, so they will probably be less prone to denting than a thinner cup.

I just received a set of the Penguin cups. I paid too much for them of course - I could have purchased a copper set of approximately the same quality from Magic 4Less - I talked to Bob today and they still have 3 sets available at $99. But, I had a $45 gift certificate and a 10% discount coupon for Penguin and I like the Brass color better for the contrast to the red fabric on my Busker's table. I realize, of course, that these are beginners cups. They can never be used in a professional performance. No working professional would ever want these cups because while they are attractive, well made, have a great finish, weigh 6.9 oz, handle well, have a great ring during the solid through solid, get the job done, look good at a distance, and are very affordable, they simply did not cost enough money.

One day I will purchase a set of large cups for thousands of dollars and then I will be a Professional and no longer a Beginner. After all, the props make the performance, not the performer, and the more expensive the prop, the better the performance.

Best Wishes,
Dave

Dave, I hope that the surgery to get that tongue removed from your cheek is not too long or expensive. But then you could always hock a couple of sets of cheap cups...LOL

It's not that no professional would use these cups. I'm sure they would if that's what was available. However, if you are working the street -- and that's the real question here -- they probably won't hold up to the kind of abuse they will get in real world performing.

I think the statement "We have showed these cups to Gazzo himself and he was quite impressed! You will be too!" may be a bit misleading. I'm glad Sam came on and cleared up what actually was said.

I am convinced that Bill, Dave, Frank and others are right. As a modest street performer of 36 years I am certain that the Penguin cups will not hold up to real world performing. After several hundred years of being tapped on the top with a wand, having oranges and baseballs shoved into them, letting every punter that touches one drop it on the ground, and all those finger prints and exposure to light, these things are going to look like an antique brass spittoon or the deck railing of the Titanic after you scrape the junk off. They will still be cups and still hide oranges, but they will be unacceptable for performance because they will have some dents and worn edges. Character would be unacceptable for these props. Made out of brass at twice the thickness of the average stainless steel frying pan they will probably be useless for hiding balls after the finish gets tarnished - maybe a week or two.

Interestingly enough, Penguin says if you don't like them you can send them back. How 'bout them oranges and melons?

Best Wishes,
Dave

Okay...who cares about brass???

F**K Brass!!!

Copper, COpper, COPper, COPPer,COPPEr...COPPER!!!!

It's just some kinda stutter I got, but-COPPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy Cheese It Crackers......

COPPER!!!!!!!!

Shall I say it again?

johnny

It's not going to take several hundred years, if you treat them like Gazzo does.

I seriously doubt that Penguin will take these cups back if you cause serious damage to them by careless performing. If you want cups that will stand up to ANYTHING, the van Dokkum cups are the way to go. You can literally kick them around the room and nothing will happen to them.

Where you run a risk with brass is that brass develops stress fractures in rolled areas over time, and it's not much time, at that. Brass hardens more than copper during the spinning process and needs to be annealed much more often. Copper, on the other hand, loses its heat much more rapidly and doesn't need it. This is why so many of the Paul Fox candy bowls developed cracked rims over time.

I'd sooner pay $99 for a copper set than $179 for a brass one, all things being equal.

I wish I could talk Michael Lee into reissuing his Millenium Cups. They will take a softball. They were made of a softer copper. It dented more easily, but you could push the dents out with a teaspoon.

The Millenium teaspoons.
I'm saving up for a set of those babies.

"tricks do not a magician make"

I would buy a big bag of styrofoam cups for $1.00 and use them. And I bet I could get as good or better reaction as any beginner out there, lol
and I could give them away.

ACE

ACE will be performing indoors with the annoucement first that no one close to the action should cough, sneeze, or pass gass in the general direction of the cups.

And you are absolutely correct! When I book a show, my contract states that I have an indoor place to work. Then I put down masking tape on the floor that no one can cross, unless they are called upon...ooops, that's my family, corporate, banquet, and kid show.

I never do cups for the adults anyway, because I do "walk up to people standing up magic", and there are no tables. lolololol. But if I did do them...I would go to that store in the mall that sells kitchen goods, and buy a nice set of cups for under $10.00. Or use nice cocktail shakers.( you can get them free during christmas season when you buy the gift sets.(If I had to worry about wind.)
Inside, I would use the paper cups all day, and fool everyone, lol. When I did resturants 20 years ago, I would steal salt shakers, limes from the bar( for final loads), and grab some "to go" plastic or paper cups, and do the whole routine. I would use crumpled napkins for the balls. And leave everything at the table. Just something to think about.

ps I have a set of RNT cups I bought for $20.00, so I would never pay 100's for plain cups, but each to his own. I was joking back at Dave, he will get rich and famous if he buys a $100,000 gold set of cups. lol. I can make just as much money or more with paper cups, and tape them down if it is windy... and crush them after each show... wait, that might get expensive...I have worked the street, but never used a table, it gets in the way. I do a one cup and ball routine in a spectators hand. so if you are outside:
So playing cards would not blow away? Or silks? Same thing.


ACE

Gazzo's comment about the cups is twisted and taken out of context, but Bill you know how that goes. I spoke with Gazzo about it and that is not what he said or meant.

Yeah Dave support a company that takes eveyones hard work and turns it into junk from China so tight wads can bypass the creator. Yeah, 36 years of experience, haven't learned much have you. MM supporters pffffft

Dave's comments were, hopefully, intended to be tongue in cheek. Of course, you can pay lots of money for a set of cups and not even be able to do an inertia display. No amount of money will substitute for talent, practice or anything else.

Andy,

I'm sure you got a set of Rings and Things copper cups for $20.00. You can't even get the material to make a set of those for that little any more. Sure you can perform with cocktail shakers, plastic cups, or even drinking glasses that are wrapped in newspaper, as Vernon did in the Stars of Magic series. But you know deep down in your heart of hearts that you really don't want to do that, any more than you want to do your card work with a deck of cards that was made in Hong Kong.

The prices of everything have gone up since those Monti cups were made back during the 1970's. When those cups were made, a Gibson RB-250, which was the basic, standard banjo for a professional, sold for about $500.00. Now, the same banjo sells for about seven times as much, and many of the parts are provided by foreign suppliers. If all the parts were made over here, the instruments would be much more expensive. I'm sure you are getting more for a show than you got 30 years ago.

A concert violinist could easily use an inexpensive Chinese violin for his work, but he usually doesn't. Why? They just don't sound as good. You have to work to hard to overcome the deficiencies of the instruments.

So, yes, you could do it. But would you really want to.

Belittling others with your smug tone because they are more discriminating than you are in their choice of tools is really silly.

Jake -- the bad guys in this case are not in China -- you know where and who they are.

Bill,
actually you missed Dave's little hissy fit in the forsale section of the Café'. He referred to us as Con Men conning people into thinking/buying that our product is superior to that of others like MM. So in my opinion his 36 years of Street Knowledge is squat. He probally thinks fine wine comes in plastic bags and cardboard boxes with a Tide Detergent spout on it.

You are absolutely right Bill, China is NOT the bad guys. As you can get the same finished product that any of us here in the states make, but you have to pay for it the same as here, by the time the importer pays fees the price would be right up there if not beyond ours or anyone elses. But when you command junk or no quality control, well that's what you get. The copper and brass used in China for the MM cups is filled with scrap alloys, if they were using the same copper as us the prices would be astronomical.

Jake:

I didn't see that post; however, if he made such a statement, he has betrayed his total ignorance of the subject. I'll admit that sometimes when you purchase a set of MM cups you get a nice set. But if you purchase a dozen sets, you may only have three that are nice and the rest will be anywhere in quality from unacceptable to mediocre. Basically, it has been my experience that they have no real quality control.

Their "street cups" are a perfect example. I got a couple of sets that were okay. But I know you got some that had some finish issues. They were worth what I paid for them, but not what Penguin is charging for them now.

Their mini cups are perfect examples of a flawed design. Instead of taking the time to finish the edge of the disc properly before they spin the cups, they spin them with a ragged edge on them. This shows up in the finished product.

Companies like Penguin offer these return policies because they know in the long run they may only have returns of 1%. Most magicians don't know the difference between a quality cup and a bad one. And most magicians are like the rest of the public. They are too lazy to return something if they don't like it. There's a big apathy factor here.

These are the same kind of people who gave their kids Marx trains for Christmas instead of Lionel. "The kid doesn't know the difference -- he's just going to break it anyway." But the kids did know the difference. Their friends made fun of them because their parents were cheap!