Sean Bogunia is one clever creator of magic. While he is best known for his large scale stage magic, Sorted Affair will always be my favorite among his creations. He first showed me this astonishing Oil & Water routine at a magic convention over 10 years ago. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it - and offered to buy the rights on the spot. I added the full deck finale and over the years I’ve worked to squeeze every bit of magic out of the handling. That’s why I’m so excited to finally have this updated version available with a full DVD of instructions, ideas, and insights.

Oil & Water is not always the most riveting of effects. I’ve always felt the key to getting reaction from the premise is to keep things as clear and clean as possible – Sorted Affair does just that and then some. The handling is very direct and seems to get more impossible in each phase. I can tell you from personal experience – and I’ve done countless performances I’ve done of this routine – that phase three just gets bug eyed reaction. By the time you reach the climax of the entire deck separation, the audience is convinced you’re a master card man. Not bad for a trick that requires virtually no skill at all. No special counts, no complex moves, nada...

At the conclusion of the routine, you could even go into many other effects using the same deck. Although they better be good - because Sorted Affair is strong magic and could easily be a closer.

Get the full details on Sorted Affair by clicking here.

One of the most common complaints we hear from customers is their dislike of shipping costs. Trust me - we get it, because we have to pay them too. Shipping is a hard cost of doing business, but in the world of magic we're all about transforming hard realities into better ones. That's why I've decided that it's time to call upon everyone's favorite word - FREE.

FREE. It's hard not to like that word. Most people do - except maybe that baby in those Capital One commercials. But everyone else seems to be really fond of it.

So here's the low down - from now until the end of this November, we offering FREE standard shipping to any U. S. destination on all orders of $49 or more. We've also drastically lowered the U.S. shipping fees on orders under $49 as well. No special links, no special codes, just good old FREE-ness in all its glory. Think of it as an early holiday present from your friends here at Elmwood Magic.

You can get the full details on this promotion by clicking here but if you have any questions, feel free to contact us directly.

Tomorrow night the History Channel will air the premiere of Steve Cohen’s Lost Magic Decoded. In the show, Cohen will track down and resurrect some of magic’s “lost” miracles of the past. It looks like it will make for a great evening and I for one will be tuning in. If you haven’t seen the trailer, here you go:

The premise of the show started me thinking about the idea of “lost magic”. In an age when new magic rolls out faster and faster every day, it’s easy for almost any effect to be “lost”. Twenty years ago a handful of new books and effects would appear over the course of a year. Now, the same amount appears in a week. It boggles the mind.

You don’t need a television special to explore “lost magic”. I’ve often said that you could create an act filled with material almost no one is doing by simply looking at what was popular just one year ago. Your act could even be more special if you looked back ten years - or a hundred! The point is that “good” magic is timeless. They may need a bit of updating - but solid effects are solid effects.

We have a number of great features on the site to help with the exploration. Two of the best are the Magic Time Machine (which allows you to see best sellers from each month since 2005) and Customer Favorites (which allows you to search the most reviewed items in each department). It’s fascinating what you’ll turn up and it can be just plain fun to go on the quest. We can’t make the job of finding “lost” magic effortless, but we can make it easier.

Happy hunting my friends...

I always enjoy watching Bob Swadling perform. His material is clean, clear, and deceptive as can be. Not to mention he and his wife Val are two of the nicest and most charming people you’re ever going to meet. I had little doubt I would like Bob’s Box - but I had no idea I would LOVE it!

The gimmicked box and coin combination are very cleverly designed and allow for some real miracles of coin magic. It’s a beautifully produced piece of apparatus that works smooth as silk. Even if you think you know how it works, I suspect you’ll still be amazed by how darn clever the thing is! The methods at play are pretty diabolical and require no complicated moves to achieve outstanding results.

The DVD covers a number of routines, including a “No Move” presentation in which a coin jumps from place to place under ridiculously clean conditions. As the name implies, not a single move is used! Of course, there are other routines from Mark Mason as well as Bob and they are all very nice. None of them are particularly difficult and you’ll even find a lovely approach for the strolling magician that uses no table. A rarity in coin box routines.

As I’ve already implied, you don’t need to be a sophisticated coin man to get a lot of mileage out of this tool. However, if you DO have any coin skills, you’ll be able to squeeze even more out of this gem. I could see combining this with the Trabucco Holdout to create routines that would baffle any audience – including magicians!

Get the full details on Bob’s Box by clicking here.

Thanks to the folks over at iTricks for the heads up on this video. I - like them - thought this was a valuable view for any magician. It's not directly about magic but it has a lot to say about generating emotional response to that which is unreal.