Pandora's Box: Jay Sankey

[Kent Gunn]

Pandora's Box (DVD) by Jay Sankey $25.00
Available at http://www.sankeymagic.com
Dealers purchase from Murphys Magic Supplies, Inc. (916) 853-9292 http://www.murphysmagicsupplies.com

The package also includes the necessary special something to build a couple of her boxes.

My only other exposure to Jay Sankey was through the book Sankey Panky. I could tell then, this was one very clever elf!

Pandora's box is a new, to me, idea for a whole slew of effects.

Jay provides you solid:

Directions on how to alter your card box into a great utility device and numerous applications/ideas for the new gizmo.

He also teaches excellent examples of basic sleight-of-hand transfers that look so good it brought tears to my eyes. He has a great touch on this most important of all sleights. I doubt he even meant to be so damn good at this point in the DVD. But I'm starting to gush and I haven't even told you what the darned thing does.

You take a completely normal deck of card out of it's case.

Your card case is now a rattle box. You can shake it and it sounds as though is has a:

Ring, coin, bottle top, condom, Halloween candy . . . whatever the hell you want thingy that rattles about in the box.

You have complete control over whether shaking the box makes it rattle or not.

That doesn't impress you? Silly magician . . .

Elf-man gives you grunches of applications. If you have a brain you can dream up your own. The Gaffing Process you subject your case to, allows you to put palmed objects into the case.

You vanish a . . . borrowed ring. Cleanly then you pick up the card case and shake it. Ohmigosh it rattles. You then open the flap and pour the ring out of the card box. The sound our fellow Sank-meister has found is perfect! This little magical gnome of Jay-ness really understands how to place pauses, the moment the magic happens into context and actually teaches some solid ideas about timing. Where the hell did this hobbit-looking guy come from?

I gotta get out more often.

This is clever. If the idea appeals to you go get one.

[Nikodemus Siivola]

Can you tell how Sankey's work here compares to Peter Kane's original The Ring in The Card Case, or Gary Plants work on the same?

The first is basically a loadable card box with a rattle (published in Another Card Session With Peter Kane), the latter I am not familiar with but believe to be a more sophisticated version of the same.

[Kent Gunn]

Nikodemus, you wrote,

"Can you tell how Sankey's work here compares to Peter Kane's original The Ring in The Card Case, or Gary Plants work on the same?"

I would love to expound upon the veritable river of card box rattle versions that have come before Mr. Sankey's work. Nothing on earth would give me greater pleasure, than to post charts of audio recordings I took with their decibel levels at two meters. I would really enjoy creating a "Ring Believablity Scale" to properly evaluate each of the three rattle boxes.

After careful perusal of my first edition of Charta Arca by Epiphanus the younger, which I am certain contains the first recorded, (at least in a Latin or Germanic based language) instance of using a paper rattle box I think we can safely say . . .

Nick,

I wrote in the review:
"Pandora's box is a new, to me, idea"

Now if you meant to point out my lack of knowledge, when you asked that question, you have suceeded admirably. If you really want to know more about Plant's card box, send 25 dollars to:

http://home.houston.rr.com/mylist/tricks.htm

If Gary is still turning them out, he'll gladly sell you one. Every item I've ever gotten from him was first rate.

If you get in touch with Peter Kane. You're a better magician than anyone on this forum. His son is still selling his library though. If you would like some of his personal magic books, I'm pretty sure the webpage is hiding on the Genii forums. Peter's son updates the list of books quite often.

All posing aside;

Nikodemus, thank you very much for pointing out there is existing work on this topic. I sincerely had no idea there was previous work on a card box rattler. My hat is off to you!!! I am a, "not humble enough", reviewer of magic tricks, with four days of experience.

I hope you took my response in the vein I intended it. My only intent was humor. I fear if we met, your superior knowledge of things magical would be readily apparent.

Please help me out, should any other obvious holes in my knowledge appear. This is a review thread, where folks may actually spend real money. Let's work to make these reviews as informative and complete as possible!

[Ryan Matney]

In the ad copy for this item Jay Sankey credits Roy Walton with the original idea. Did he make a mistake and mean to say Peter Kane?

[Bill Duncan]

Almost certainly. On his Ambitious Card DVD he credit's Dai Vernon or "Fred" Kaps with Fredrick Braue's Popup Card Move, calling it "the Vernon Bend."

Jay is a performer, not a historian.

[Ryan Matney]

That's cool. I respect his creativity and enjoy sifting through his massive output, But he has aboout half a dozen people previewing and workshopping his products, looks like one of them would know some of the credits.

[Andy Hurst]

Jay is a performer, not a historian.

Does that make it acceptable to get credits wrong or miss them out altogether? If so then it makes magic publishing one heck of a lot easier doesn't it? Just do what you want and if anyone notices just say "I am a performer, I don't have to be accountable."

Andy

[Richard Kaufman]

I would give Jay credit for at least attempting to give a credit. Many folks don't even bother.

[Andy Hurst]

I would give Jay credit for at least attempting to give a credit. Many folks don't even bother.

Fair point Richard, tell you what... I'll give credit but I'll give it to David Acer since he is also a Canadian magician and I am just a performer ;-)

[Bill Duncan]

Andy,
I wasn't making a value judgement, just suggesting that Jay wasn't the best resource for accurate information of this type.

[Jonathan Townsend]

That being said, how would someone who's used the Kane box ( and had those nice little card session books of his for years ) see this latest offering in terms of improving the gimmick as published?

PS Kent, you'll find "Jazz Aces" nearby of you go looking. :)

[Kent Gunn]

Jonathan,

I sit, ever hopeful of gaining some insight into your febrile mind. (By that I mean you think feverishly or intensely, not that that you've got a low-grade fever). You lost me at "nearby of you go looking." I know you can put a sentence together as well as anyone. I don't know what the above post meant. HELP!

I am aware of Peter Kane's Jazz aces. I have the routine, written up by Herr Ortiz, in At the Card Table in my bag-o-tricks. I do not have any of Peter Kane's original write ups. If I recall . . . Kane has some work buried in Apocolypse . . . Harry where is your super-power memory, when I need it.

I was mildly irritated at my overall lack of magical knowledge, when compared to some of our august members, here in GF land. I remain in the dark as to how Mr. Kane gaffed up his box, vs. Mr. Sankey's derivative and poorly credited version.

I do bust out Tarbell, when I think something may have been pilfered from therein, as I review. The card box rattle wasn't listed in my on-line sources of gaffuses, nor could I find it in Giobbi. Had it been in Tarbell, that I would have remembered.

[Jonathan Townsend]

"Another Card Session" also has Peter Kane's Jazz Aces.

[Kent Gunn]

Thank you Jonathan,

Someone else emailed me with a translation earlier. A link to buying the sessions by Kane also showed up. Yet another fine fellow came over to my house, with his copy of sessions to show me the Kane version of the rattle box.

I can finally get to Nikodemus' question!

The two versions are identical in efficacy. Both allow the deck to be removed from the case. Neither case would suffer even the slightest examination.

Kane's version, think weights and flaps, Sankey's version think sliding back and forth gaffus.

Kane's write up is bare-bones at best. He does provide a lovely trick with his write-up. Your second deal had better be pretty spiffy.

This entire debacle has led me to order the Sessions booklet. No disrespect to Sankey intended. I did get his DVD for free. But I'm keeping it and will install his version of the gaffus in a card box!

[Bill Duncan]

I'm just gonna throw out the name Tobias Pashia here...

When The Magic Bakery releases his DVD, we may return to this topic.

As Pete says, stay tuned.

[Hallas]

Many years back I used to use the Kane version quite a lot. Always got a great response. From Kent's original review (although since mentioned how mechanics differ) one important difference of Sankey's version seems to be:
"You have complete control over whether shaking the box makes it rattle or not."

Of course, within the context of the ring in card case routine why would you want to shake the case and have no sound anyway?

Paul.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Some folks have been using that (or a similar gaffus) to get coins to travel into or out of a card case.