Hi all,

Not been on here for a long time, but glad to see this community is still thriving. I collected cards for a couple of years but have now sold most of my collection.

While going through some old cupboards I came across a poster tube with the beautiful Fantastique uncut sheet inside, the last of my collection!

I've put it up for eBay auction at 99p, with the appropriate delivery costs for international. I'm posting here in the off chance that someone is in search of this for their collection!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fantastique-Deck-Uncut-Sheet-Signed-Dan-and-Dave-Rare/253536122244

Maybe one day I'll get back to playing card collecting, but it was just too saturated with custom decks back in 2012 when I stopped!

I have a few listings on eBay that I thought might be of interest to some of you. All listings starting at 99p and shipped internationally. All listings end in 5 days.

Mixed rare(and not rare) deck collection - JAQK, Tendril, Blue RTJC, Red Stinger, Arrco

Absolut Vodka deck

Three crown decks - Black, red (v2) and blue (v2)

Arrco Tahoe Limited Edition Gold - item is slightly damaged, see listing for picture.

That's all for now. Haven't been on the board in ages, stopped collecting cards around a year ago now and this is me still trying to get rid of them all!

Hope you are all well! Happy bidding.

One brand new, sealed deck of first edition Black Ghost.
Auction ends 1st July, one week from now.
Starting bid - £0.01
Worldwide shipping, shipped from UK - special delivery/tracked and recorded option only due to rarity of item.
Within UK - £6.50; Rest of Word - £9.50
Auction here

I locked the previous thread I had selling my whole collection as I had no new interest in a while. I will now be selling my decks on ebay, starting with this rare item.

For sale on eBay are the v2 Crown decks.

Price - £4.99 (US$8) each.
Shipping - a variety of shipping from £1.45 - £6.50 for domestic, £6.80 (US$10.99) for international.
Quantity - 3 of each colour (red, green, and blue) available.

This listing is most likely of interest to UK buyers. Cheapest price elsewhere in the UK for this deck is £5.99. If you find somewhere cheaper than £4.99 in the UK let me know and I'll alter the price.

So, I've sought help from lecturers to no avail (not because they don't have the knowledge, they just seem to poor at keeping appointments/following up emails), I registered on a forum all about statistics but it seems to only get a few posts per day and no one even replies to tell me 'we're not doing your homework for you'.

So, I thought who knows? We are a diverse bunch of people, maybe some of you card enthusiasts are master statisticians by day and conspire with the devil in your magic conjuring by night.

Basically, I want to know if I am using the right statistical test for my research project. I won't put down the details until someone actually responds with kindness to help. If no one responds, we can just let this thread die with the statistical nonsense that it is!

Has anyone else noticed that reviews on websites for magic tricks/decks/gear seem to be very very positive? Look around on websites such as Dan and Dave, T11, Ellusionist and you'll notice that it is often hard to find something lower than 4 stars. And the reviews use very hyperbolic language like 'this is the trick to end all tricks', 'I have been waiting all my life for this trick'. Those aren't actual quotes, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were similar to statements.

Does anyone else notice this, and if so, why do you think it is? When you read around magic forums, the mood is very different. People are disappointed with tricks left, right and centre. Even if people are pleased with their purchase, putting a more beneficial review than "Oh my God, you need to buy this trick now!" doesn't seem so hard to do.

In my experience of retail as a customer and as a seller (I sell books through Amazon) the people who tend to speak up are the people who have a complaint. The skeptical part of me thinks that it's either people employed by/volunteering for the companies for marketing; people who haven't bought the item (this problem is apparent in other places too - people writing reviews on Amazon for a DVD that isn't even released yet irks me).

Dan and Dave seems to be the worst. I don't think anything on that website is lower than 4 stars. Hell, even their $25 'sleight of hand lotion' has five 5-star reviews! Us magicians/cardists must be an easy bunch to please.

This was mostly a rant, but I'm genuinely interested to know if other people notice this and have any thoughts on it.

I don't yet have any of David Blaine's playing cards, but trying to find out about them is proving difficult. There seems to be several different ones, each with several colour combinations. I'm pretty darn confused about the whole thing and was wondering if anyone could help me get my head around this series so I know what I need to look for when I decide to seek them out for my collection.

The information I can find (mostly from Playing Cards Wikidot) gives me this list:

Split Spades in red, blue, and black;
Split Spades Lions in red, blue, and black;
Split Spades Bee Back in black and inverted black;
Split Spades White Lions.

Is that all of them, or am I missing some? Also, I'd like to know about their respective value/rarity. They all seem to be sold out everywhere I look on reseller places. Is that the case? Is it a series that is continuing or is that all of them for the forseeable future?

So, I was talking to my fiancée about my deck collection (we've been long distance relationship for the past four years, so she hasn't really seen me get into it yet!) and she mentioned that she remembers a deck of cards her uncle had when she was a young girl. I thought it would be good to try and find those cards so that when she gets here later I can have something that will both ease her into seeing my expanding collection and will give her fond memories.

All the information she gave was that they were transparent and had blue in them - whether that's the pips or just generally I don't know. I am wondering if any of you know of any such cards. I don't really want to ask for any more info as it would be nice to act like it was just a passing comment so she gets surprised when she finds it.

I guess more relevant information is that is is likely to have been between 10 and 20 years ago, and she lives in Brazil.

A quick search led me to these cards:




I wonder if there are any more that you know of that could fit the description?

I recently ordered all of the Karnival collection so far, several from a vendor called MagicBox here in the UK. I was surprised to open up my package and find that my Karnival Hornet had morphed into a Phoenix back. I don't know anything about the Phoenix back cards other than they are £2 (~US$3). I'm not the kind of person to ask for refunds or complain though, so I'll just accept the cards into my collection.

Does this happen often to you guys when you buy a few different items? If it does, would you contact the seller and try and sort it out? And if so, what kind of outcome would you prefer?

And what are the Phoenix back decks? Feel free to tell me that the Phoenix back is mighty rare and has a wonderful and diverse history.

Hello, aethercards.

I've started card collecting and realised that it's not as straightforward as just looking through a few choice websites and getting all the information, so I've decided to make an account in the hope that I can keep up to date with what's going on in the card collecting community.

I started buying cards to learn card magic around 5 or 6 years ago, but ended up losing interest. I caught the magic bug a few months ago again, and the card collecting bug hit hard soon after. Since this is my first post, and I'm going to be frequenting these forums mostly for card collecting purposes, I thought I'd list the decks I currently have (in the order I see them sitting nearby):

2x Karnival Death Heads
1x Karnival Midnight (foil case -yuck-)
2x Karnival Dead Eyes (my favourite deck, aesthetically)
2x BeDeceived Style
2x Black Arcane
1x White Arcane
2x Karnival Renegades
2x Red Bicycle Series 1800
2x Bicycle White Ghost
1x Bicycle Shadow Masters
1x Bicycle Black Deck Tigers
2x Bicycle Red Masters
1x Karnival Original
1x Bicycle Phoenix Back (I ordered Karnival Hornet and got this instead, but I'm an easy going guy so just left it)
1x Karnival Assassin
1x Red Artifice
1x Brown Wynn Logo
1x Ellusionist LTD
1x Black Ghost 1st Edition
1x red, blue, green and black Crown

I also just got Dan and Dave's Variety Box V6 which, although isn't anything special, is good since I don't have any of the decks contained in it.

I tried to get my hands on some of the rarer decks to begin with just to get myself firmly established. Now I hope to just buy decks regularly and keep up to date. However, I hadn't heard of this 'Kickstarter' thing until about 30 minutes ago through this site, and it seems there's a whole world of custom playing cards that I've been missing. I don't know whether it's better to stick to mainstream cards or not. What do most of you guys do?

As for whether I use cards or not - if the deck is an affordable price (i.e. less than $10) then I'll tend to buy two of them - one for using and one to stay sealed. If it's a deck I know I wouldn't like from reviews and pictures or if it's stupidly expensive then I'll just get one for the collection.

Anyway, that's probably more information than you care about. Mainly, I'm here because I think it is good to be around like-minded people and it seems like there's a lot of knowledge in these threads that would be helpful.