I would love to destroy a dirty deck with borders using a magical killer effect.
My choice of effects can be either Card Warp by Roy Walton, Ripped and Restored Card, any effect using Mercury Card fold or Joking Around by Lee Asher.

I have never taken into consideration how much not having a border makes a difference. Good to know.

Matthew

With a little effort you can easily cover the non-bordered issue. I used solid black cards for years. Del Ray used Bees exclusively. It takes a bit more work, but a compatent card worker can handle it.

With no borders...hmmm.... Plenty of forces, you can do color changes, and you can always a triumph routine.

Untouched is Darryl's presentation for a card trick originally published by Tony Picasso in the first issue of Pabular.

I would have to stay away from double lifts or reversing a card due to the cards having no white border.

If the condition was pretty bad then I would stick to self working tricks.

What I would do after a couple of tricks is then say " these cards are a bit worn let me show you a trick with these bikes!"

Dave Williamson's 51 cards to pocket.
Harry Lorrayne has a trick called Lazy Man's Card Trick from Close up card magic.

Truthteller,
Del RAy would be happy to know that you can now purchase Bee poker sized cards with white borders thanks to World Poker Tour.

I think with a little conversational misdirection, anyone would be ok doing a DL to remove some of the heat.

I would probably do Design for Laugher from Royal Road. It's a great routine that always brings a strong response.

I watched Del on several occasions and got to know him through conversations, I think he would have stuck with the non-bordered cards. The non-border gives advantages that bordered cards can't. You can work around the problems of reversed cards, etc. with a non-bordered deck; but the reverse is much more difficult.

How about 'Prefiguration' from The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings or perhaps Rosini's Double Reverse.
Anybody?

Spelling Trick with key card and pass.
3 card monte if the cards are in good enough condition that they don't have any marks, crimps, etc.
Triumph w/ zarrow

Wanted to correct the reference I gave. It was Tony FARO's trick which was published in Pabular.

I had this exact situation happen to me very recently. As I was sending out a DVD to a fellow Café member, the guys in the mailroom at work asked "hey, I heard you are good with cards, let's see something". I had no deck on me, so they handed me the rattiest, flimsiest, worn deck I have ever seen. I went through the cards, announcing I was "making sure they're all here". I was secretly preparing the deck for Paul Harris' Galaxy. After I verified that they were all there, I did a few false cuts that maintained the complete deck order, did a riffle shuffle, and proceeded to impress the guys with an incredible effect that required virtually no sleights.

DL's should not be a problem with non-bordered cards. Just work on your technique. Reversals are another matter. But ringing in your own cards after doing some things with a borrowed deck is really a bad idea. You might as well scream -- "I'm not really very good, so I'm going to use my trick deck now."

Better not to borrow the cards than to borrow them.

Now, here's a tip. If you are working with your own cards, and someone offers you a greasy, dirty deck, then take their cards and do OOTW. Then don't do ANYTHING else.

You wouldn't accept a used tissue if it was handed to you, ask if they have another slightly newer deck. while they are looking, excuse yourself and head to the bathroom to see if they have lysol bacterial spray.

This is really very useful post, so keep it running guys

I would probably use this kind of deck or few cards from this deck only as a cover to do a watch steal

Topit the dirty deck and produce a clean one off your sleeve! just kidding. Appart from automatics and key cards, you can do most of the tricks based on a force (there's many force you can do even with a dirty deck)