It’s been a surprisingly busy month for January. Lot’s of orders going out and plenty of goodies coming in! Here are my favorites from the last few weeks:

• Miracles With Cards: This is a great book from James Swain, packed with strong stuff! I was a little sad to see it get reprinted since it was nice to have these gems kept to a small group. If you like card magic, this is definitely worth a look.
• S.U.M. Deck: This marked deck has been long unavailable and that was a real shame. Luckily the good folks over at Card Shark decided to make it part of their new Phoenix Deck line. This can be used as a standard marked deck…but if you really want to slay an audience, spend some time working with the stacked mark feature. It’s scary deceptive!
• Liquify: Bill Abbott & Richard Sanders have teamed up again to deliver another winner. This is a powerful way to reveal a prediction. The information appears slowly and eerily until it comes completely in focus. It can’t be set up on the spot in the middle of a routine, but there is an “on the fly” method which allows you to do the dirty work very quickly.
• The Pandora Bag: If you use a clear force bag for any routines, then check out the Pandora Bag from Creative Magic. This bag allows you to show the bag completely empty, then secretly load force items into a separate compartment at will. You get two different sized bags and a detailed DVD with lots of ideas…but a little time brainstorming will have you creating your own routines in no time.
• Cataclysm: This new effect comes from Brian Caswell the creator of the wildly popular Trilogy effect. In Cataclysm, he delves back into those waters and surfaces with another very ingenious routine. The photo prediction is a cool way to make the revelation and the spectator freely chooses any cards. There is a one time preparation with a normal deck, but after that you’re ready to go without any set up.
• Final Penetration: I’m always excited when a new box from Mikame lands on my desk. These effects are always well made and, generally speaking, diabolically clever…this one gets high marks on BOTH counts. This is so clean and fair that it is guaranteed to fool even a seasoned magician. Everything can be examined before and after the effect.
• Sweetly Done: Shane Black and the good guys from Paper Crane Video have joined forces to deliver a wonderful (and reasonably priced) one trick DVD. The effect is visual, strong, and pretty darn easy to do. I should warn you that it will require set up for each performance. But you can make a large batch up at once and it’s not terribly difficult to do. It’s an organic mystery that is just perfect for the restaurant or banquet magician.
• Diminishing Sponge Ball: Two months ago I mentioned that it was pretty rare to get a cool new sponge ball trick. As it happens, lightning has struck again. This nifty sponge ball effect is very visual and the instructional disk teaches some lovely touches. Just check out the online demo to see what I mean.