Hugard’s Magic Monthly Complete File

Man oh man, where do I begin. I was at a magic convention in Ft. Worth Tx. The other guys had gone to see a show and I was in the lobby with one other guy. He proceeded to wreck me. I've been a magician for 30 years, and a professional magician for 9 years and he fooled me with card magic I had never seen before. I don't just mean plots I hadn't seen. I mean methods I hadn't seen. We ended up jamming for over an hour. This legend of a card handler taught me some of the routines but when I asked where to find it in print, he said "Hugard's Magic Monthly from the 1940's".

I was very pleased to find it as a compendium on VI. I ordered immediately. It took me about a week to find some of the routines he performed because he had refined the handling on them and the presentation was not the same. But after I read each method of the card tricks from the newsletters, I finally recognized the routines. It took forever because this is a massive compendium! I feel like you could build an entire career in magic using just what's in these monthly newsletters.

The old guys always say the best magic is in the old books, and this is certainly a case where that was true.