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If you are like me, your drawer or cabinet is bursting with unused 
props. Every now and then your look at them admiringly, promising yourself to add them to your program one of these days.
Those days don’t come. At least not immediately. For most of those tricks, the day they get broken in never comes at all. Thus the magic tricks you plunk your hard-earned money on, the ones that make you salivate looking at their pictures and reading their ad copy on online store’s web sites—they remain in your cabinet, never to be shone by a stage spotlight.
Well, it takes an iron determination and a gritty discipline for a magician like me to control myself not to splurge on tricks I won’t perform anyway. Since I don’t have that kind of will and discipline–my determination is made of plastic instead of iron, and my discipline is mushy instead of gritty—I always part with my money when I see advertisements of tricks and props I fancy.
I don’t mind spending money on tricks. What I mind is spending money and not adding the tricks to my program.
For more than two decades, I have been a banker. That’s long enough to understand thoroughly the advantages of ROI (Return on Investment). ROI simply answers the simple question: how fast can I get back the money I spend on new magic gizmos.
Tricks that don’t go right away into the program have long ROIs, and therefore are not good investments. I know that by heart. However, I’m still a sucker when I see an ad pitching the latest, newfangled tricks. I still sent for them, even though I know I won’t get my money back in the foreseeable future, because they will just reside inside my cabinet when they arrive. Bad business.
So today, looking at the jumble of tricks inside my cabinet, I make a decision. I’ll learn them all and put each one of them in my program. If I can do that I will have five, maybe eight, non-stop hours of show!
I really don’t need another trick. I don’t need a new prop, either. So beginning today, I swear never to buy a new magic trick or prop.
I’ll stop buying and spending money on tricks—as soon as I have bought my dream Cube a Libre, Kirkendall Reel, Steve Spill‘s Mindreading Goose, JOL Wallet, Joe Berg’s Professional Wonder Nest Of Boxes, Okito-Nielsen Chinese Sticks, and a dozen accessories. And oh, I will have two or three illusions built from plans I already have.
That’s all. After I get all those, I won’t buy anymore magic. Promise.
Stay magical,
Leodini
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Hello everybody,
I am a friend of Ted Orlando, so I have heard a lot about performing in your part of the world. Actually we are the same age, so it is only natural that I have the same problems as Teed, amongst them, a lot of props I either never started using or have stopped using.
I have found a wonderful way of getting rid of them: I have pupils. (Of course no money required, only a burning desire to learn magic) They must take the magician’s oath before being elevated to Sorcerer’s Apprentice Status. After that they come to my house once a week. I perform a trick, and if they would like to have that trick I make a deal: “I will show you how to perform it and you will practice at home. Next week when you again come to see me you will perform the the trick for me. In case you have done your homework and your performance is to be considered adequate, the prop is yours to keep. If you did not do your homework I will show you no new trick. You must go home and practice and come back next week.”
No money could buy the satisfaction I get from seing these 12 – 15 year old boys progress, seing their pride when I say, “well done, the prop is yours.”
We started with svengali and other card tricks and now they have invented card tricks of their own, of which I do not know how they are done. We are now slowly progressing to Larry Becker’s books and even Cesar’s tricks.
Whenever someone reviews a tricks the review usually ends with “most highly recommended”. Let me say the same about my method of getting rid of props I no longer need.
Kaarlo von Freymann Helsinki Finland
Hi Kaarlo, what you are doing with your unused tricks is unheard of but GREAT. I love the idea. I’ll publish your letter as a full-fledged article on my blog, so other magicians and readers will know about your project.
Stay magical,
Leodini