Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Six-Card Repeat

Invented by Tommy Tucker, using a glide for the false count. He first published it in Eastman's Expert Manipulative Magic, 1933, p. 18. See Pull-Down reference above for notes on the use of that sleight by John Booth as a subsequent sleight-of-hand method for this trick. The buckle count was also applied to the trick during its early days. The first published suggestion of using bills instead of cards seems to be by C. Brustia in The Sphinx, Vol. 36, No. 1, March 1937, p. 8. Brustia featured only the idea of using bills instead of cards, while writing, “Use your favorite method.” Brustia preceded Tom Bowyer and his “Repeat Bill Trick” in print by nine months. Bowyer contributed his version to the December 1937 issue of Genii, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 110. Sid Lorraine credits Baffles Brush with the card-envelope method, in the late 1930s (see Tops, Vol. 18, No. 5, May 1953, p. 19). He writes, “The method, however, was first introduced to us years 'n years ago by the late Baffles Brush. It was during John Ramsay's first trip to America, which should date it. Baffles disclosed the method to John and yours truly in deep secrecy. Several inventors have claimed the method since.” Bowyer used envelope bills in his 1937 “Repeat Bill Trick”. Since Bowyer was Canadian, he was likely in Lorraine's circle and privy to this information. This first trip by Ramsay to America seems to have been in 1934, when he performed at the IBM convention in Batavia (see The Linking Ring, Vol. 14, No. 4, June 1934, p. 275). Sam Berland came up with the idea of using rubber cement on the edges of the cards to hold packets of three together (The Tarbell Course in Magic, Vol. 6, 1954, p. 75).