Steal these Cervon Castle Notebooks again!

[Gary Kosnitzky]

I just put these up for 99 cents- no reserve:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/131169055199?ss ... 1555.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/131169055400?ss ... 1555.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/131169055984?ss ... 1555.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/131169056319?ss ... 1555.l2649

[PickaCard]

I am stunned at how low the resale value has been for these limited edition, legendary notebooks.

While almost all limited editions retain their value, I do not understand why these are so easily discarded for less than retail.

I treasure mine.

[Richard Kaufman]

Only the first one has any value. Sometimes that which is hidden is more valuable than that which is readily available.

The material is not "reader friendly," and the credits are clouded by what Bruce did: which was to write the notebook entries with no attribution, then go through later--sometimes years later--and add initials to items. Thus there are items in the book attributed to Bruce that belong to either Vernon or Jennings.

[Brad Henderson]

I wish they had reproduced the pages at the original 8.5 x 11. or offer a page by page original/typed format.

really are hard books to try to read.

[Richard Kaufman]

And they required annotations.

And they were overpriced from day one. The price should have been $250 for the 5-volume set. That would have been fair.

[Brad Henderson]

absolutely agree on the annotations.

these may be the product with the highest expectation to disappointment ratio I have purchased in my adult magic career.

[Richard Kaufman]

Then you didn't buy my book Lim-tricks.

[Brad Henderson]

I bought that one before I considered myself an adult

[Marco Pusterla]

Then you didn't buy my book Lim-tricks.

I bought two of them!!!

But my daughter enjoys them, so they can't be that bad

[oskar]

Will you ship these to the U.K.?

[Ian Kendall]

I seem to remember that a while back someone was starting a project where they were typing up the pages as a closed online community. You used a certain word on a page as a password.

I wonder if that is still going...

[El Mystico]

This is funny.
Credits? Sure - no-one held these as more than Bruce's recollections of the credits.
Annotations? Sure - no doubt the majority of magicians would require extensive annotations.

But - these were Bruce's personal notebooks. So, weren't intended to meet either of these criteria.

Understanding what they are, they are regularly used by me.

As for annotations - yes, I'd love that. But which individual would you want to do them? Which individual would understand the scope of the work?

I love these books, volunteered to do the index, and was proud to be part of the project.

It seems to me that Gary apart, who may have bought several sets, few are reselling their sets.

[Richard Kaufman]

If people thought they were very valuable, then volumes 2 through 5 would have increased in value, not decreased.

The notebooks were the idea of Larry Jennings. Since Jennings had trouble writing, he asked Bruce to record everything. It took Jennings ages to get copies of the first two notebooks that had his material in it from Bruce. When he finally did, he discovered that the initals which attributed the material were applied incorrectly, which is why Bruce kept putting Larry off instead of just giving him a copy of the notebooks right away.

[erdnasephile]

...As for annotations - yes, I'd love that. But which individual would you want to do them? Which individual would understand the scope of the work?
...

IMHO, I think someone like Jim Patton or Mike Perovich would be uniquely qualified to annotate the notebooks, if either of them cared to do it. There were rumors for a time about a subsequent Castle Notebooks commentary being published. Did anything ever come of them?

While we're discussing the books, I may as well say it--the way the missing page in Volume 5 situation was handled was not particularly optimal IMHO for such a high dollar set of books.

I do think the index adds immeasurably to the project. Tip of the hat to El Mystico!

[Jonathan Townsend]

annotations as an activity and then some publication of that could be useful.
vetting and meta-commentary to be published to add transparency

might be fun to do similar with the hofzinser stuff.

maybe a page or item annotation process?

[El Mystico]

A group annotation of the Daley Notebooks would also be interesting!

[lybrary]

Anybody interested in page by page commenting for magic literature should take a look at the digital shelf on Lybrary.com. One can add comments to any page of any ebook bought and either keep that comment private or share it with other customers of the same product.

Essentially this is sort of a mini-forum for each book where each book page constitutes a thread in the forum.

I don't offer the Castle Notebooks, so commenting is not possible, but it is possible on thousands of other magic books.

[Brad Henderson]

what is the missing page issue? I have all 5 but don't recall that

[JimW]

Brad,

One page in Volume 5 was accidentally printed twice, and another page was left out. You can download the missing page here: http://www.brucecervon.com/Pages/Notebooks.html