Brad Jeffers wrote: Mahdi Gilbert's playing cards should be exactly what you've been looking for.
Poker size, no indices, white borders.
Case closed!
Mahdi's deck?Unfortunately I don't think Mahdi's Hidden Leaves deck will quite work to make the needed gaff.
As you can see from the image below showing cards from this deck, the spot cards from Mahdi's deck have one-way pips. Given the nature of the gaff, aside from the diamonds (which are reversible by default), these cards won't do the job, because only half the illusion will succeed, while the other half will be incorrectly reversed.
Standard Bicycle deck?Yet cards from a standard Bicycle deck also won't easily work, as Jonathan Townsend has already pointed out. The large pips used for the court cards on a standard deck are smaller than the pips used on the spot cards (see size comparison below, with the difference in size shown with black lines) , and that this makes those cards unsuitable for making the gaff as well.
Chu Magic version of Fantabulous ("Find The Queens")You can buy the gaffs for Royal Fantasy under a different name. Lubor Fiedler's "Royal Fantasy" is based on a Brother John Hamman effect called "Fantabulous", which uses the same gaffs. Fantabulous was one phase of a larger routine entitled "Wild All the Way", which can be found in
The Secrets of Brother John Hamman (1989). "Wild All The Way" consisted of a phase called Ace-Sational, which was then followed by Fantabulous.
An inexpensive version of Fantabulous was produced by Chu's Magic under the name "Find the Queens", and can be found fairly cheaply online (e.g.
here and
here), as shown below, although be aware that the cards are not likely to be very high quality. Search for "Find the Queens" and "Chu" to find other places online that have it.
Repro Magic version of FantabulousI have seen a vintage set of Fantabulous cards produced by Repro Magic.
Here's how it describes the effect:
There's a couple of interesting things about the gaff (which I've reproduced roughly below on the right, with a standard Queen of Diamonds on the left for comparison):
1. It has the large pip on the
right hand side of the card rather than on the
left hand side (besides the index), and the flower has been eliminated. This ensures there's lots of space for the larger pips on the spot cards without anything looking out of the ordinary. (I don't know if you could achieve the same with a standard Queen of Diamonds, however, due to the top/bottom borders potentially clashing with the location of the pips on the spot cards.)
2. The dual card used is a Queen of Diamonds / Queen of Clubs, and it retains the original smaller indices. How does one deal with the fact that the small indices specify a particular red or black suit, or does that go unnoticed by spectators? (e.g. the diamond index when showing the Queen of Hearts, or the club index when showing the Queen of Spades). Or is it better to have a gaff with the small index windowed too?
Performance videosFor reference, I'll include some links to some related video clips, showing performances of this routine:
a) Performance of Royal Fantasy, with European style cards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSXwedzW_OQb) Performance of Royal Fantasy, with over-sized Bicycle style cards minus indices:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLuoQ4RcbYgc) Performance of Bro John Hammon's "Wild All the Way", with the Fantabulous phase beginning around 1 minute in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozHlgjvpYYQ