This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/17/2024
[THROW-OUT CARDS]. Seven Vintage Magicians’ Throw-Out Cards. 1910s – 60s. Poker and bridge-size cards, including two examples for Edwin Brush (one designed by Harlan Tarbell and advertising his magic course on the verso); and cards advertising T. Nelson Downs, Frederick Eugene Powell, Alexander Adrion, Ettrick (“King of All Mystery”), and Walter C. Jeans (with optical illusion back design). Scrapbook remnants to verso of one card else, very good or better. Several of these images were used as interstitial illustrations in Cards as Weapons.
Magicians distributed these souvenir cards by hurling them – usually with unerring accuracy – into the waiting hands of audience members seated throughout the theater. Ricky Jay, himself a world record holder for card throwing, used several of these cards to illustrate his cult classic book Cards as Weapons (1977). See lot 3.