Types of Cards for Magic Tricks

Series Summary

Magic is an art of illusion, a practice in deception, a training in trickery. People have entertained, deceived, or swindled crowds throughout history with feats of prestidigitation. It is widely accepted today that there is nothing supernatural about magic; in essence, a magician skillfully conjures the appearance of real magic through sleight of hand, misdirection, and other secret techniques. This is why many magicians call themselves "illusionists," embracing the idea that the audience enjoys the trick because they don’t know the mechanisms behind it.

Magic tricks are not only great for stage and street performance but are also well suited for entertainment at parties or as ice breakers at small group meetings. Card tricks are among some of the most popular and infamous illusions used by magicians. In this free online video series, learn how to do simple card cuts and shuffles, some of the foundational techniques for more complex tricks. Our expert magician will walk you through some basic tips like which types of cards to use, how to hold the deck, what the cards are called, how to shuffle overhand, how to do a Hindu shuffle, and how to cut the cards. Once you’ve practiced enough, watch the reverse card trick and learn the secrets of playing card magic!

This series is an Equilibrio Films production.

Video Transcript

" Hi everybody, Malik the magic guy with expertvillage.com and welcome to card magic. First I’m going to teach you some things about the kind of cards that you want to get and kind of cards that you want to use. As you can see from our setup here, there’s lots and lots and lots of different kinds of cards. The ones you’re going to see the most often and the ones most professionals use are basic Bicycle cards; these are the easiest to get, these are available at any corner store. There are some other ones you can use, some of the major drug stores like these Stud cards are the Walgreens brand, the Brooks chain of pharmacies carry Streamlines, they’re just in a slightly different box. These are both pretty good, you can use these, these are Aviators, obviously well used. One of the cool things is Bicycle cards now are coming all different colors so you can add a little novelty to your act, these are some cards called Black Tigers made by one of the magic suppliers. If you just want to practice, some of the discount stores will carry cancelled casino cards and these will either have the corners shaved off like on these or they’ll hole punched through them somewhere. These are probably only going to be good for practice, this is also an example of what’s called an all over back design cause it doesn’t have a white border, and these are going to make it a little harder if you’re doing a trick with a reverse card in the deck, so these are probably only good to practice, practice some stuff. Now this is another example of a card with an all over back design, and these are called Steam Boats and that’s what they look like, there’s another one called Bee’s that have all over designs. Cards come in all different sizes as well. These are an example of some little ones here they make these in red and blue and bunch of other different colors. They have some big ones, and they have some giant ones: I actually got these at the toy section of a discount store, and they make Bicycle cards in this size as well. This is an example of something you don’t want to use: these are playing cards that are clear plastic. They actually they look pretty cool but they’re a little hard to handle. This is however a good example of what’s called a bridge sized playing card, and I’ll show you the difference. A bridge sized card is a little bit narrower than a poker size card by about, you know, a little less than a quarter of an inch. And if you got smaller hands you want to get yourself some bridge sized cards, they make them in Bicycle and all that stuff. So there’s some examples of some cards to use we’re going to use, basic Bicycles, but the important thing is you want to get plastic coated regular plastic coated playing cards, poker cards and that’s going to be perfect for almost every use."