I've been hosed!

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Steve Mills
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I've been hosed!

Postby Steve Mills » December 18th, 2012, 2:02 pm

I've been messing with this stuff for well over 50 years (damn!) and was going through one of my periodic purgings the other day seeing if anything was worth doing, selling or just throwing away. Most fell into the latter category.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the worst tricks I ever bought. We've all done it, I assume. You open the box and have a terrible sinking feeling and then try to talk yourself into "I must be missing something". As time passes, you realize that you've just been screwed and it's as bad as it first appeared.

I'm sure I've forgotten a lot, but I guess the worst trick (price/quality) has to be that $50 Rubber Coin - Silver Shifter.

Anyone care to chime in with their experiences?

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Richard Kaufman
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Richard Kaufman » December 18th, 2012, 2:34 pm

I didn't buy this trick, but it was sent to us for review.

It was a rising card using a stripper deck. Price $75.
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Dustin Stinett
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Dustin Stinett » December 18th, 2012, 2:36 pm

I bought one of those big a$$ed brick magnets way back when. All was not lost though: I use it every New Years day when I take down the Christmas stuff. The staples that I pull, I just drop in the direction of that magnet.

Joji Matsuo
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Joji Matsuo » December 18th, 2012, 10:19 pm

So that's how you use this brick magnet...

I bought a gimmick for floating a cell phone when cell phones were going out of style. Smart phones are too heavy for the gimmick. I guess the timing of this purchase was the real problem, not the gimmick itself.
From the land of the rising sun. No strings or gimmicks. Performed every morning.

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Dustin Stinett
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Dustin Stinett » December 19th, 2012, 1:39 am

I once dropped my keys down into a gap between some temporary wood steps and my house. I attached the magnet onto the face of one of my golf clubs, lowered it down into the space, and SMACK! Up came the keys! Over the years I've also picked up dropped pins (in carpet), nails, screws, etc. That big a$$ed brick magnet has paid for itself in time and trouble many times over!

Jeff Haas
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Jeff Haas » December 19th, 2012, 1:53 am

Joji - Search ebay for "fake iPhone" - you can get plastic demo shells very inexpensively, that should be very light.

Joji Matsuo
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Joji Matsuo » December 19th, 2012, 6:23 am

Jeff Haas wrote:Joji - Search ebay for "fake iPhone" - you can get plastic demo shells very inexpensively, that should be very light.

That would work, but it wouldn't allow me to do it with a borrowed iPhone, which is how the gimmick was intended to work with cell phones.
From the land of the rising sun. No strings or gimmicks. Performed every morning.

Oddly Bent
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Oddly Bent » December 24th, 2012, 3:42 pm

I can think about a lot of painful memories about going to the magic shop in the late 1940s, buying something for a few hard earned dollars I got from working at the corner grocery, picking cotton and chopping weeds for neighbors.
One item I bought was with a drinking glass, might have been the hydrostatic glass, and dropping it in the bathroom sink and breaking it. Yes, this 10 year old cried.
But that is small potatoes thinking about stuff you buy today for $150 and finding out the trick is done with magnets or a piece of thread, or materials you can get at Walmart for a cupola bucks. But then, you get a DVD, and that is suppose to cover the $145 markup.
Now think about this, you can buy a $500 trick for $46 at a Chinese magic store.

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Master Payne
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Master Payne » December 26th, 2012, 4:50 pm

This type of behavior by the purveyors of magic apparatus was the impetus for me creating this routine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VCUQ3wOBog
The only way to become a good magician is to overcome why you became a magician -- Max Maven

Evan Shuster
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Re: I've been hosed!

Postby Evan Shuster » December 26th, 2012, 9:01 pm

:)
Possibly the best coin in bottle I have ever seen (and at a fraction of the cost).


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