Card Magic Essentials DVD (Tomas Medina & Royal Magic)

Good for reviewing, not for learning

This is a very ambitious video. Undertaking to explain all the fundamentals of card magic plus five routines in around only 60 minutes? There's only one way to do that, and that is: very quickly. As a result, this video covers a LOT of material in a short time.

That makes it great for review purposes, but not so good if you are starting from scratch and relying on this to learn all the sleights. In such a short time frame it's simply not possible to do justice to all the details in order to teach them properly. But if you're already familiar with many of the basics, it's still helpful, and I picked up some good tips along the way.

One disadvantage is that magician Tomas Medina is left-handed, so right handers like me need to switch everything you see, which can be quite a pain if you're trying to copy what you're seeing.

There are better resources available which people genuinely new to card magic should opt for rather than this one. But if you already know the basics, and just want a quick refresher course, then this video is perfect.