I've just got the Rice books and I know overall of what to get to start, but just wanted to get some feedback on what are the gotta haves to go through the books?

I wouldn't look at these books as a series of "gotta' have " items...rather it's a collection of the best or most popular silk effects for the period of around 1920-1960.
You can use them as reference tools, or study them for the wonderful plots and stratagems of the time.
Like Tarbell, they are a source book that in most cases... that need fleshing out with an original style, or personality to perform them

Personally, I have a number of gem-like favorites from these books that might read like nothing in cold print...but are dynamite in front of an audience.
Your job- (should you decide to accept this mission) is to seek them out...and in the process discover something new...it's rather like serendipity!

Regards-
JNeal

Learning to fold a silk would be the first important lesson you'll learn. As you learn silk tricks from other sources, you come up with this problem. Then you'll do what I do and take down my Rice book and go over the folds again.

I made my Blendo from this book. I love it and used it for hundreds of performances. Also, I used the Vanishing candle, to silk, to cane idea. There is so much good info in it, it's best to start with the first book and learn how to take care of your silks and go from there.

Jneal and Mtpascoe are right on the money.

What is best about Rice is the ability to look at a lot of different methods for the same effect. You can learn some of the strong and weak points of something very quickly here. If you need to produce a silk, you can quickly look up a bunch of ways to produce it; with or without apparatus.

It is an invaluable research tool.

Richard

The flash production of a single silk handkerchief I do as part of my opener comes straight from Volume 3, as does the my silk and egg routine. (The presentation and script are mine; the handling and structure of the routine were created by Harold Rice.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "gotta haves." What you've "gotta have" for, say, a 20th Century Silks routine is different from what you "gotta have" for a Sympathetic Silks routine, and that of course is totally different from what you would need to have for a production of silks from a square circle, phantom tube, etc.

There are so many different routines that you could probably never have everything you need to have to do them all. I think as you discover different routines that you like, that you would just naturally start to assemble the silks you need.

One important bit of advice: Once you have the silks you need for, say, 20th century silks--use them exclusively for that routine. Don't use them one week for 20th century and the next week for the production from a box. Restricting the silks for one particular routine will make it easier for you to make sure that you always have exactly what you need for any given show. This is not to say that you can't segue from one silk routine to another. For instance, I might produce six silks from a production device and then use one of the silks for the silk through rope effect.

When I started in magic, I did primarily a manipulation act with cards, billiard balls, and the linking rings. One 24-inch silk served my purpose. I used it to pull through my fingers when a stock of cards was b-ckp-lm-d--then used the same silk to produce a billiard ball to begin my rainbow billiard ball routine, and then again in my linking ring routine for a silk through ring effect. That one yellow, 24-inch silk met all my needs. (I should point out that when I started in magic, I couldn't afford the box tricks like a Warren Hamilton square circle, so most of my magic was stuff I learned from magic books.)

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez