I don’t know much about the magic scene in Germany, but they seem to have more specialist card companies than most. I have known of the work of Card-Shark.de for some time, but today we are talking about the latest Monte Cristo Deck from CardMaker.
CardMaker is a German company specialising in custom printing on Bicycle stock. Thankfully (for us) their website is also in English. They also sell a number of refills for some common packet tricks, a nice ESP deck, and a number of special decks including the Monte Cristo Deck.
What do you get?
A lovely Bicycle 808 deck gaffed in a very clever way. This is CardMaker’s ‘Series 3’ deck which has been made directly by USPCC and so quality is top notch. Written instructions are available to download (with the password supplied with the deck).
Lest there is any confusion (and I have certainly seen some on the forums) this is the same kind of deck as the Mastermind Deck – it is not a new principle. But it is a very clever one. It means you can freely shuffle and handle the deck and yet have complete control of the card a spectator picks, without any sleight of hand.
The instructions come with a load of ideas to start you off, including a dead-easy Ambitious Card routine and a Koran style prediction effect. Tantalisingly the ACAAN effect has not been translated into English yet, and so is not available in the instructions (as you know it is one of my favourite effects) – but it doesn’t require an enormous amount of thought to work out how you might achieve this.
Nice additions with this particular version of the deck are 2 extra cards. The first is a blank-backed version of the force card, the second is a force card with a large question mark printed on its blank back. Both lend themselves to predictions and more magical revelations of the force card. A nice touch.
What do we think?
I love this deck. For me, magic which is easy to do and powerful in effect is what I am looking for – and with the right presentation this has that. One friend of mine closes his act with this. These cards handle beautifully and I think that the extra cards are a useful addition. So they come highly recommended.
Where can you get them?
CardMaker are doing a special deal for readers of this site. If you quote the code ‘BCCUK2010’ they will give you 25% off the regular price i.e. EURO 24.50 (roughly £21) instead of EURO 32.50 (NB + EURO 4 for p&p). This is only available direct with CardMaker and not via other dealers. You will need to email CardMaker directly to take advantage of this deal.
Otherwise, MagicTao will be stocking them shortly, as will DudeThatsCoolMagic – we will update pricing etc. as soon as it is available.
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