The Genii Forum

Apparently Milton Franklin Andrews is not the only one to enter a life of crime after getting hooked on card tricks:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/51020 ... e.html.csp

Creepy!

The way I read it is that, besides card tricks, you also need to be a numismatist.

Uh-oh! I do card tricks and have a modest coin collection!

Not sure it's a good diagnostic/leading indicator for a predisposition toward criminal behavior but probably worth doing a study. Anyone in a position to review casefiles and collect the data for analysis?

Buzz kill

ha, you just want to know which trick it was that did it.

When I was actively running H & R, some of our good customers were incarcerated (which had nothing to do with my running of H & R, just a coincidence, I'm sure!). It was frustrating sending them things, as each warden had his own set of rules. Sometimes books had to be sent with the hard covers removed. A set of the 4 volume reprint of Harry Lorayne's APOCALYPSE was returned because it was deemed to encourage gambling (we waged a letter campaign with the prison board on behalf of the client to get a reversal of the decision, but to no avail). I recall once we sent a copy of Jon LeClair's book on invisible thread to a prisoner and the warden let him keep the book but sent the thread back. What was he going to do, saw through the bars with it?

Interesting - any idea which card tricks, books or authors are most popular with that market segment?

Jonathan Townsend wrote:Interesting - any idea which card tricks, books or authors are most popular with that market segment?

I was surprised that we didn't sell any books on escapes to that niche market, but probably they wouldn't have gotten past the warden. Card trick books were very popular, as I recall, I assume in prisons where possession of decks of playing cards was allowed.