Gold Arcane Contest winner announced

March 14, 2010

Ladies and gentlemen, we present your winner: Mallow81.

In our Gold Arcane Contest, competitors were asked to submit a video of themselves performing for an audience with either a black or white deck of Arcane playing cards. They were judged on their originality, proficiency, utilization of the deck’s design elements into their presentation, performance and audience reaction.

A.k.a. Brandon Porterfield, the Okinawa, Japan-based magician performed for a class of Japanese students who are still learning English. Porterfield had a perfect mix of interesting presentation, technical difficulty and KILLER performance that had us loving this video from the first time we saw it.

Our judges were also taken with the performances by Joe G (great interaction and presentation), Ninja G (outstanding skills) and Clement (powerful creativity). But Mallow81 had the best combination of all of the above, and put the priority on the performance. And we’re always going to value performance over other aspects.

For his entry: Mallow81 will be receiving our new Gold Arcane deck. Our only print run of this deck is at the U.S. Playing Card Company, running through its new Goss printing press, right now. Like the 1st ed. Black Ghost deck, it will be available only as a contest prize or promotional item. It will not be for sale.

Congratulations to Mallow, to the finalists, and all 47 competitors. We saw some great live performances! We hope it encourages you to get out there and drop some jaws of your own.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Ellusionist Products, General | 3 Comments

Magician sues PayPal for holding Haiti donations

March 10, 2010

A magician and mentalist who traveled to Haiti on his own earthquake recovery mission has filed a lawsuit against the organization that collected donations for his mission.

James Clark has sued Paypal for mismanagement of his account. He said the company is holding both business funds and donations to him, collected via PayPal. According to a small claim affidavit posted on his Facebook page, he alleges the company refuses to release funds in the account. He is suing for $1,500 in order to recover money for business and in support of his trip to Haiti.

Clark, who is trained as a medic and spent 19 years with the U.S. Army, in January asked for donations to fund his mission. He returned about a month ago with pictures and video of the things he and his crew encountered, and is currently planning a second trip.

An interview request has been sent to PayPal, Inc. for comment. The company is based in San Jose, Calif.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under General | 3 Comments

Magician at Trump party irks society writer

March 2, 2010

Some people just don’t like magicians. In our opinion, writer Chiara Atik may be a member of that group, so don’t try to impress her with your new application for Lego figures in card magic. (Lookin’ at you, Pancakes.)

Atik was mystified why a pink-tied magician would be performing at Ivanka Trump’s launch party Monday night for her fine jewelry collection. She seemed bothered by his knack for showing up in a lot of the party pictures (taken by Sonny Norton of Guest of a Guest) with a fan of cards in hand. The only good part about him, Atik said: At least he’s not an electric violinist. Apparently, those — like the phrase “for the win,” LOLcats and flourishing videos with the performer’s crotch in the background — are played out.

We looked at the party pics, and it looks like he’s killing it. Because we have a background in photojournalism, we can easily see why the photog would take pictures of him, instead of stuffy socialites drinking drinks more expensive than our card collections.

So who is this magician? Know him? We want to give him some props for workin’ it.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under General | 4 Comments

Writers break down evaluation of card collections

March 2, 2010

It’s no secret that magicians have a special connection to playing cards. How big is your collection? Do you have all the super rare Jerry’s Black Golden Watermelon Dunes Nugget decks?

But here’s the real question: In what shape is your collection?

In addition to being a great sleight of hand artist and a card star, Lee Asher is a member of 52 Plus Joker, a group dedicated to the collection of playing cards. He recently interviewed Tom and Judy Dawson, authors of the Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards. The two talked at length about some of the basic grades for a deck and how to evaluate what grade a deck is.

The interview is over in Asher’s Playground. Check it.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under General | 2 Comments

Rules announced for Twitter Trivia Challenge

February 19, 2010

Here are the rules for the Ellusionist Twitter Trivia Challenge:

If you’re not already a Twitter user following our page, make sure to sign up and follow us.
Starting at about 3 p.m. Central time today, Ellusionist will post questions to its Twitter page. We will post one question at a time, and other questions won’t be asked until the original one is answered.
Questions will cover general magic, tricks, magicians and Ellusionist products. In fact, just prepare yourself: You’ll need to make a visit to some of Ellusionist’s pages to get some of these questions answered. Other questions, however… there’s nothing on the Internet that can help you with them.
Players answer by replying to the question (Select the Twitter question then click “Reply”).
The first correct answer scores a point. Ellusionist will announce who got the question right and earned the point by retweeting the first post with a correct answer. The player with the most points after 20 questions will be declared the winner.
The prize for winning is 12 decks of our custom decks of playing cards. Gaff decks, trick decks and rare decks not available for individual sale may not be selected. Only one of our deck styles may be selected — no mixing and matching of 6 Ghost decks and 6 Shadow Masters decks.
In case a correct answer is not given, Ellusionist will use discretion and judgment in deciding when to post a new question. However, each unanswered question will remain for at least 15 minutes.
Unless otherwise indicated, answers must be as specfic as possible. Answers must fit inside a single Tweet

That should do it for now. Good luck!

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under General | 10 Comments