I bought two decks that both came in perfectly fine working order. As for how adequate the repairstick is, I am yet to test it. I think I will try to construct a complete new Destiny Deck with the included stick out of curiosity to see how well it works. I'm unaware as to what is used in the aforementioned Smart Ass.

I made a whole spare deck from the repair stick and it works better than the original. Olly

Any particular way to apply it? Just the same way as is shown in the online instructions?

It is good to hear that someone also confirms the working of the stick while others have problems.

And I have to say that my provided repair stick works, however I would only use it for reparation, no preparation. My decks easily last 100 performances and more without any troubles.

Yes I only used the repair stick that came with the product. Olly

Er, no. What an owner has confirmed is that your repair stick works better than your other “secret” application. How can that be?

Your decks may well. But it is apparentl that others do not. Perhaps yours have undergone, let’s say, an enhanced QC process.

The problem was that the original deck had 4 or 5 sets of cards without any treatment at all ( that’s how it appeared at least ).
I treated those with the repair stick and they seemed better than those that were treated.
I then made a full deck myself with the repair stick and cards I already had from Christian.
I have many many decks of his and love the d decker principle so I had the resources and it honestly seemed that the old adage in this case at least was,
if you want to do something properly then best you do it yourself. QC Pegasus I agree in this instance Olly

I remember a cartoon (burlesque?) a magician thought of ACAAN, ambitious, oil and water, triumph, invisible deck... etc. etc. and the spectator just thought of on thing: It is a card trick.

Frittentick lol have you been drinking, what you talking about as it makes no sense? Give me a pint of it please, merry xmas Olly

It's hard to understand if you don't know the cartoon and with the misspellings in my post. To clarify: MAGICIANS are thinking about what methods to use, how clever the gimmicks are etc. and the SPECTATOR just think: OK - it's a card trick. Nothing more and nothing less so he never will appreciate the methods you use nor the $80 you have paid for a single card trick.

I totally agree with David Penn in his review for (WMS) it is a very good trick deck but way over priced in my honest opinion

My biggest problem with Card Shark is their awful customer service
I ordered Destiny Deck on the 26th November and received confirmation on the3rd December I answered straight away querying the postage charge as I was sure the ad said free postage (i was very polite and added that if I was wrong then to accept my apology)
Did not get a reply
8 days later now 11th December I emailed to ask if they could advise when it would be shipped
Again no reply
I resent the same email twice more on the 12th December much later that day I received an email to say that it had been sent (no reference to any of my previous emails)
It arrived 17th December a total of 22 days (Germany to England)
When I order from Magic Wagon from Thailand to England they arrive in 3 to 4 days no contest in service levels
I will never order from Card Shark again but I am sure they really won't care

I will never buy another product from them either. Their QC should be exemplary, but it’s anything but.

Well, actually we do care. And we apologize for the delay of our shipments during the last newsletter. To straighten out facts and postings here: if I would only listen to the negative statements of the Magic Café and not the many feedbacks we get via email or in person, I would already have given up supporting the magic community. Sometimes the negative energy in these forums is overwhelming and many creators just avoid those forums altogether for a good reason.

Our online shop system is pretty old and is not connected to our invoicing system (also very old) that makes it necessary that all orders are added to our invoicing system manually. I wanted to replace that system two years ago, but when our warehouse was hit by a fire in April 2017, all the funds I had put aside were used up for a restart. (But not to forget the help of hundreds of magicians worldwide that provided us with important cashflow as well at that time.)

Regarding "Free Shipping": we did offer this for all clients / newsletter subscribers who would use the provided Promotioncode. This is NOT an automatic process. If you are not using the promo code, the system works as always, charging a low shipping charge of 4.90 Euro / 6.50 US$ for a registered mail worldwide. As said, the system is old, this is how it works. (Btw, we are paying more for the shipment than you did.) Please go back to your email inbox and read the newsletter again we sent, you will see in big bold letters that you should use the promotion code to get free shipping.

That said: "normal" order volumes can be handled by my team within 24 hours. However, the latest newsletter seemed to have struck a nerve, as we got so many orders in, that my team constantly worked for about 10 work days only to write the invoices nonstop, nothing else, before being able to send out orders. (Well, we do have two warehouses, one in Germany and one in USA, the one in USA could immediately ship once the invoices showed up in his system, but my two person team in Germany focused on getting the orders into our system as fast as possible.)

Now, this sounds like a "nice problem to have", but it was not. But I could also not stop the offer as people certainly would have complained being closed out from the offer. Now imagine if you are only ONE of the hundreds of orders, and ask us two or three times when your order ships. You were not the only one per day asking. I tried to answer all those emails but also tried to keep the backs free of my employees so that they could get their work done as fast as possible. It was a VERY time consuming task, and (almost) all customers understood the problem we had.

We are not Amazon, we are not Ebay. We pay our taxes fully, we pay our employees fully, we pay our contributors of magic fully. All this is not free of charge. If you believe that Magic is a big market, please think again. It will always be a niche market, and every contributor normally does it with the passion and love for our art.

I am proud to say that our customer service is top notch. My team and I really do care. If you think that our products are overprized, come up with those ideas we put into real life workers by yourself. If not, understand that names like Boris Wild, Joshua Jay, Henry Evans or Tom Stone share their ideas with the world (but not for free). Once the idea is published (after months, if not years of rework and optimization), all appears to be very simple. That is when Chinese knock-off pirates are coming in and taking over with cheap reproductions, cutting out the necessary gains to be able to continue the work. They can avoid all the research and development cost (and the payment for the artists) and just select the items that already sell well. What a "risk"!!! Btw, not every idea we are releasing will be as successful as for example the Destiny Deck. We can only decide upfront if we like the idea and think if we can turn it into an everyday worker (what I prefer: high quality, high value, easy to perform but strong impact on the spectator).

So I would like to ask every magician who either claims that magic is overprized or who supports the knock-off pirates to come up with ONE single magic item himself and try to market it. His view will change drastically.

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

So your customer service is top notch but we have already read many posts that don’t agree with you

Having been in business several years myself the first lesson that you need to understand is the Customer is King

Fact is I don’t normally agree with what Saturn Magic but in this instance I agree 100% with him , you are always saying you are not a dealer but a creator

So maybe you should leave the dealer side to the real dealers and sell to them as clearly you can’t offer the customer service that people expect

What then will also result in cutting even deeper into the calculation as dealers certainly also want their share.
(Btw: I do that and sell to dealers as well.)

Some people understand, some don't. I cannot serve all. And I accept that fact. I better shut off for a while and work on our new releases (while my team is on holidays)...
Wishing you all the best

I've always found Card Shark very responsive as a magic dealer. If a problem has come up, he has replaced the faulty item a.s.a.p.
I think he has a strong selective range of classy products which may seem expensive but are fairly priced.
Like many of us, I try to take advantage of sale prices when they are available.
Some of his products are undervalued. For example, his MDs are great value. And his specially printed Strippers are excellent.

Hate to say that I agree, because I avoid making any negative comments, but I have to agree with you. After considerable delay, my order was only shipped after I emailed asking whether it would ever ship.

Then, when I finally received my DD, there were no instructions. Again I wrote, this time asking for the password. The responding email from Card Shark stated:
"When you registered for the Destiny Deck Tutorial, you should have received the email with the password (which, by the way, it did NOT). It is:".....Again, no password, as the password was, believe it or not, covered by a picture of a post-it-note with a quote from Lee Asher!! It would have been hilarious, were it not so frustrating. Fortunately, another member of The Café helped me out.

The DD is great, but the customer service? Sorry, not so great.....

Please do not believe that we sent out your order because you sent your email. We wrote all invoices in their specific order how they were placed and once all the invoices were written we shipped the orders in big chunks, again in their specific order.

Ok, you received the Destiny Deck, and on the flap(s) is the link to the instructions. You did contact me probably and I might have guided you there in case you did not find the url. If you send me a private message with your email address I am happy to look into it.

I am not proud about the delay regarding our latest newsletter, it was a one of a kind situation that clearly showed us our limits, and I apologize.

I am looking for a better shop software and if anyone knows a programmer who would be interested to work with us, please let me know.

The system for getting the password to the instructions was confusing considering the need to sign up two times and receive two emails. Also, I received a database error when trying to order from Card-Shark a few weeks ago. I sent an email and it was fixed within the same day, but clearly their software should be updated.

I must say that whilst I have sympathy for those with order issues, I also have sympathy for the situation of Card-Shark. The fact that Christian takes time to post here shows that he cares far more than many others.

I would surgest you contact Acar at Penguin , all orders are sent the same day , he is very quick to respond to questions and I have done and order one day and got it from US to UK in just 2 days

Even during sale time clearly he knows what he is doing !