What to do with old decks of cards?

I am interested in your ideas. Here are a few of my own:

CARD WARP is an obvious one, but also WARPED IN SPACE.

TORCHED AND RESTORED by Brent Braun.

LINKED CARDS: I make linking cards that just need the centers torn out. I switch out the matching cards from a deck I'm using and ring in the gimmicked cards.

SILHOUETTE CARDS: I can't remember who released it, but it's an effect where you pretend to cut a silhouette of a famous person out of a card and you give it to them as a souvenir.

THREE CARD MONTE

OIL AND WATER

CARD THROWING

GLUEING AN ENTIRE DECK TOGETHER AS A FINALE AND GIVEAWAY TO A TRICK.
I do a trick where I glue two stacks of half the cards and then put rubber cement on the top of one stack and the bottom of the other. After doing a deck switch, their selected card then goes into the middle of the gimmicked stacks, I cut to their card, and then cut the deck so the two halves stick together permanently.

PRACTICING THINGS THAT REQUIRE DESTROYING CARDS, LIKE CARD WARP

It seems to me that Max Maven has put out a few tricks that only require around a dozen random cards.

Here are some other ideas I've learned over the years:

MAKING ORNAMENTS: Stringing a bunch of cards with holes in opposite corners and bending the cards so they look like a ball of cards.

MAKING HOUSES OF CARDS

MAKING BOXES

More ideas?

I like to keep 3-4 cards in my shirt pocket or wallet that I can destroy or give away. They don't seem to last too long in my wallet anyway before they get bent up.

Here is one that I like to keep in my shirt pocket: For example, A regular King of diamonds, a regular red spot card, a regular black spot card, and a gimmicked king of hearts for the Larry Jennings Close-up Illusion. I take out three of the four cards, leaving the regular king of diamonds and taking out the gimmicked king of hearts along with the other two spot cards. When done with the Larry Jennings routine, I put the cards back in my pocket and then either wait for them to ask to see them or offer to do something else and take out three cards, including the regular king and leaving the gimmicked king. I either do a card warp where they pick two of the three regular cards, a monte routine, or something involving mentalism.

If anyone has a multi phase mentalism routine with three cards, I would love to check it out.

KJ

Practice your favourite T & R card effect. Max Maven's "Tearable" destroys two cards each time. It's in his book Focus and in one of Doc Eason's Bar Magic L & L DVDs.

I have drawn numbers on the backs of the cards for use as flash cards to help memorize a stack order.

Give them away to friends who play card games.

Practice all the sleights that you regularly use with them. That way, you can still entertain people after being handed an old and used deck of cards.

Practice your Mercury Card Fold

I recently purchased J.C. Wagner's 7 Secrets book and may end up pulling out some of my older "retired" decks

I like this one. I have been wanting to memorize a stack. I even created a stack that suited some tricks that I created, but I fell short of memorizing the stack enough to remember it if I didn't use it for a while.

KJ

Have decks of used cards handy that you just use for card destroying effects. If you only do such an effect a few times in a day or at a gig, just carry enough of those used cards to do those effects instead of destroying your newer cards.

Find a desirable box, cover it with a desired color, take six cards and affix them on each side to make card dice.

Sign them and/or stamp them with your business info/web site etc. to use in effect and hand out.

I mean there's old cards, & then there's old MANKY cards... =P

Creating gimmicked or special decks (ultra mental deck, rainbow deck, 5-way forcing decks, Rick Lax's "The End" decks, etc.).

I found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1LVTM9pygI

I purchased this, and I thought making a gimmick of all the court cards would enhance this trick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1LVTM9pygI

Sorry, wrong link. Here is the link:

https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/S30214

That looks fun, thanks for sharing.

Another use: Cut up the old cards into confetti to make any magic show more fun.

A few extra cards would be some good candidates for sewing into the lining of a scarf/jacket, hiding under the flyleaf of a book you're about to give a friend for Xmas etc.

Keep track of who got what, do a card trick for them a while later (that goes wrong because you somehow can't find their card any more) and then, boom, the rest writes itself..

Hello,

Jeremy Tan does some cool card-cutting, which he calls Card Kirigami.

I followed his tutorials and made these, which look nice on the shelf. I also used old cards to make my 'Deck In Bottle' too. No one knows the card box is filled with old cards.

You could also make some 'Impossible Folds' too, which look nice, and are a cool giveaway.

Sorry, forgot to attach the picture. Here it is:

Click here to view attached image.