Spring Magic Auction

Marlo, Ed (Edward Malkowski). Marlo’s File Tag Card Trick Manuscript Archive. Approximately 1000 IBM-issued Parts Identification Tags, printed with the name of the F.J. Littell Machine Company, the versos filled with Marlo’s handwriting and describing a host of card tricks, sleights, stacks, and routines. Among the tricks and ideas described are the Dribble Coincidence, A Red Hot Number, Marlo’s Technical Variation on the Veeser Concept, Expedited Faro Placement, The Visual Poker Routine, Tucanplay, You’re Psychic, and many, many more. Most descriptions fill a dozen or more cards (with several running to 50 or more), and many bear annotations (“pics taken,” “Date – Jan – 1977,” etc.), and many give indications as to where illustrations should appear, while others include crude drawings in Marlo’s hand. Photostats of many cards are included, as well. Each card 3 ¼ x 7 ½”, and most in good to very good condition. A singular and significant accumulation of secrets from one of the magic world’s most prolific technicians. Widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most prolific creators of card magic, few magicians realized how Marlo spent his working hours. For decades he worked in Chicago factories, performing the complicated task of a “set-up” man, the employee whose responsibility it was to set up industrial machinery so it could run for days, weeks, or months at a time. Marlo spent a large portion of his working years employed by the F.J. Littell Machine Company, whose name appears on these cards. As legend has it, Marlo was able to perform his set-up jobs in a fraction of the time others could; as a consequence, he used his extra hours at work to invent, refine, and record magic tricks and sleights of his own devising on the backs of the cards. He even, reportedly, wrote entire chapters of his books on the backs of some cards, many of which were passed off to typists or the editors of the dozens of periodicals to which he contributed. As one Marlo student remembered, Ed also used the cards as an ersatz pack of cards, with which he could work out various moves, stacks, and handlings while on the job; this way, if any superiors stumbled on Marlo taking liberties with company time, they would be none the wiser. After all, he was not toying with a pack of cards, but rather, a stack of IBM file cards that were part and parcel of his everyday tasks.