Manufactured by Joe Porper to his exacting standards, anodized and engraved with an Ask Alexander deck inspired motif, and made to fit the superior card stock used with this deck, these are a welcome addition for the discerning card handler.

Each clip costs $39.99 (postpaid in the US!). Plus, you will also receive, free of charge, two decks of Ask Alexander playing cards (one Cambric and one Ivory)!

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For example, Guyot in the first book to describe the classic pass, mentions the wide card as being one of the indispensable tools to the conjurer. At that point in time, the quality of playing cards was such that nearly every pack was so poorly cut that you could immediately locate one card whose size was suitably larger than the rest in the deck. However, current cards are pretty uniform (although the superlative Derek DelGaudio’s sensitive fingers seem to prove otherwise!) and the wide card has fallen into disuse. You can make your own with one of our uncut sheets and breathe fresh life into this extraordinary bit of chicanery. Enjoy!

They are $29.99 postpaid domestically. Shipping elsewhere is $11 for first class mail. Contact Alexis (librarian@conjuringarts.org) for other options.

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As a special treat for Halloween, we are releasing uncut sheets of a number of our decks for sale for a limited time! These are what the cards look like before they are cut and work great as display pieces or for other purposes. We had the Erdnaseum sheets, for example, at the Erdnaseum convention and there were a number of people getting them signed by all of the attendees, so a good idea might be to have a sheet signed by your favorite practitioners of Erdnase!

We have had a limited number of the sheets printed, and have already given away a lot of our stock of the Erdnaseum sheets to attendees of the convention, so act quickly. They will not be reprinted. Additionally we still have a very limited number of our previously released uncut sheets and Ask Alexander playing card decks so feel free to add to your order!

The Erdnaseum uncut sheets are available in Cambric. However, the Ask Alexander uncut sheets are available in both Cambric and Ivory finishes. Please contact Alexis if you have any questions or have trouble ordering through the website.

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Now available to everybody….in limited supply!

In honor of our glorious friend, Ask Alexander, we have collaborated with M. Stutzman, artist for David Blaine’s wonderful playing cards and posters, to bring you the Ask Alexander deck. Featuring numerous diabolical properties and an elegant, cunning design, this is a deck that you will be proud to have with you in magical endeavors, as well as an excellent addition to your card collection.

The Ask Alexander deck is printed on the finest casino paper and to the highest standards available at the United States Playing Card Company. During the course of our efforts to make our various custom playing card decks, we have made numerous trips to the USPCC’s facilities in order to personally oversee the manufacture of our playing cards and to make any and all adjustments necessary to craft the perfect deck of cards.

This unique, impressive deck is manufactured in both Cambric and Ivory finishes in order to accommodate all personal and devious preferences. The cards are cut in the same fashion as our previous decks to facilitate smooth handling and effortless faro shuffles.You may notice a similarity to Bulldog Squeezers and Angel Back Squeezers. They were our inspiration when designing this deck. The bold one way back design of the Bulldog Squeezers combined with the elegance and nuanced features of the Angel Back Squeezer deck.

Available to Members with their member discount, Conjuring Arts has also made them available to non-members, at the retail price, if they do not sell out. If you would like to become a member please click here.

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CONJURING ARTS MEMBER PRICES:

RETAIL DECK PRICES (NON-MEMBERS):

See our Shop for shipping prices

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Please remember that you can include Indestructible or Original Erdnase Bibles, Gibecières, as well as any of our other merchandise with your cards order!

*A dozen decks is shipped in a priority flat rate envelope, which does not allow for the brick to be shipped assembled, if you would like the cards in the brick box, let us know. We would be happy to ship the whole thing to you for a small increase in shipping.

Head Librarian, CARC

apavenick@conjuringarts.org
212.594.1033

Question:

Find the worth of a photograph to Dai Vernon. Use the title of the object of the photograph to find an article about a book. The psuedonym of one of the men mentioned in the article will lead you to an article where he is discussed at length. Which book was he trying to acquire as part of a trade?

Send your answers to: geniianswer@conjuringarts.org (Contest has ended, see the answer below!)

Answer:

This contest was won by Chris Ragaisis quite quickly! We were very surprised and impressed with his researching skills, and then even more surprised when, almost just as quickly, we received several other correct answers! Congratulations to Chris and those of you who are interested can view the answer we were looking for here:

Answer to the contest!

Thank you for trying and Good Luck! Happy Erdnaseum to everyone!

Greetings from Conjuring Arts!

As you may have read, our last contest was answered correctly by Frank Yuen (Congratulations sir!) and, in order to give everyone more incentive to use Ask Alexander and find glorious information, another contest is in order! The prize remains the same (ten decks of our playing cards postage paid), although we will be offering an alternate prize, having to do with the contest, should the winner be so inclined…it’s kind of a big deal.

See our previous contest for more information and check out the question and answer to see what we are looking for.

The challenge will be to use Ask Alexander to answer the question posted below as quickly as possible. The first person submitting the correct answer(s) will win the ten decks of our playing cards (postage paid) or the alternate mystery prize! We hope that you have a good time using your complimentary Ask Alexander access and find many more things along the way!

Question:

He had an Indetectable handling of the Erdnase Diagonal Shift-Palm in an Annemann magazine. If you look for Nelms, Fitzkee, and Tommy Wonder, you will find an incomplete trilogy of books. Find the missing book, and where he annotated it, to find out some objects that might be good to produce from an incandescent bulb.

E-mail your answers to: EMCanswer2@conjuringarts.org Contest has already concluded. Congratulations to Bill Mullins on his quick and accurate answer!

Answer:

We figure since the answer came so quickly, we should give some more time for people to try the question if they so desire without the answer being right here, so here is a link:

EMC Contest #2 Answer

Thank you to those that took the time to try out  the contest, and we hope that you found some good things during your search!

As a special treat for EMC 2011 attendees, we are offering a contest! Everyone that registered for the convention before July 4th has received special EMC 2011 level access to Ask Alexander. The challenge will be to use Ask Alexander to answer the question posted below as quickly as possible. The first person submitting the correct answer(s) will win ten decks of our playing cards, postage paid anywhere in the world! We hope that you have a good time using your complimentary Ask Alexander access and find many more things along the way!

Question:

A magician uses a double lift that can be described as “impeccable” in a legendary magazine for a feat that was “double”-y legendary. Search this magician’s name along with Peter Pit to find, if you look back, something out of place. What is it?

E-mail your answers to: EMCanswer1@conjuringarts.org Contest is closed…see the answer and the winner below!

Answer:

Congratulations to Frank Yuen for his correct answer of our contest question! The correct answer was “a card”. The answer can be arrived at by looking for Impeccable Double, a Howie Schwarzman technique from Professional Card Magic by Cliff Green, in Jon Racherbaumer’s The Legendary Hierophant. You will find a story of Persi Diaconis performing the technique with two doubles! Searching for Persi Diaconis and Peter Pit leads one to several pages, one of which is a trick in Genii magazine called the “The Card on the Back”, so, if you look back for something out of place, it is a card!

Hopefully everyone that attempted the contest enjoyed their search and is considering becoming a member of Conjuring Arts!

Thanks!

The first thing you will notice is the new design which was elegantly conceived and created by Dave Buck. Second, you will notice a number of improved functions with regard to the search. These include thumbnail pictures of the book covers next to the results, more results, and, this is the big one, a much faster search! Try it and see, even a search for “Houdini” or other big search term returns the results almost immediately. Third, we have expanded upon the collections idea with a page feature called “My Alex”. Here you can assemble a bookshelf of your favorite books and give them ratings so you can locate them instantly. Additionally, there is a button to repeat your last search or to look at all of your previous searches.

Hopefully these new features will help you find some wonderful new knowledge and improve your magic! Thank you very much to Dan Smith, Dave Buck, and Dan Smith for all of their help in this and future iterations of Alexander. Also, if you have computer skills that may be of help to us, please consider volunteering as we could certainly use the help in making a great tool even better. Happy searching!

One of the most exciting events of 2010 is nearly upon us, and we are excited to announce that we will be playing a small part in this grand endeavor. In addition to appearances and talks by nearly every epic magician on the planet (please check out the line up here, it is breathtaking),  Conjuring Arts will be present to unveil the new look and functionality of Ask Alexander 2.0 Beta. Those of us at the center lucky enough to check out this version of Ask Alexander have been very pleased and are excited for everyone to see the results.

Thanks to Dan and Dave Buck for letting us have this opportunity and for their help in designing Alex 2.0!

I recently had a spirited conversation with a group of magic collectors over the pros and cons of our very own database: Alexander – The Computer That Knows. Some suggested that any publisher who allowed his books to be scanned and uploaded onto the data base, was diluting the value of his books. The thinking being, if the information is available on line, why would anyone purchase a hard copy of the book? Others believed that the availability of this wealth of information far outweighed the potential loss of revenue to the publisher. As the owner of a niche publishing house myself (Mike Caveney’s Magic Words) it might surprise some to learn that I came down firmly in favor of the fattest possible Alexander. To my way of thinking, it’s a no brainer.

Fortunately for me, people who collect books on magic have an inherent flaw: they like the way books feel in their hands. Of course they enjoy the information these books contain but they also like the dust jacket, the gold stamping, the printed end sheets, the feel of the paper, and they enjoy seeing the spine of that book as is sits on their bookshelf. All elements that are not provided by a database. The fact that every word of these books is now on line does not change the fact that they enjoy holding that bound volume in their hands.

You might also say that with the advent of the Alexander database, I can take my entire collection of periodicals to the paper mill and have them pulped. Why not, its all on line anyway. Think of the space you’d save.

The truth is that Alexander has made my periodical collection even more valuable to me. There is nothing I enjoy more than finding numerous obscure references to some arcane subject on the Alexander database, then walking downstairs, pulling the original magazines off the shelf and settling into a comfortable chair to peruse magic history in its original form. Alexander has directed me to magazines that I haven’t peeked into for years and for that he has my undying gratitude.

And lastly, the number of people who are willing to join the Conjuring Arts Research Center so they can gain access to our wonderful pool of knowledge is not that large. I imagine they are mainly people actively engaged in the writing of a book or article about a subject that I will most likely enjoy reading. If having my books included in this pool of knowledge assists them in their task, and ultimately results in a more complete article, then we all win. And if that researcher finds him or her self reading a digitized book filled with interesting text, they might just decide to buy a copy. All of a sudden, instead of losing a customer, I just gained a new one.

If there is a down side to the Computer that Knows, I just don’t see it.