Marked Decks

[Steven the Wizard]

Spectators should never insist on examining your deck. That means you are presenting magic as a puzzle or challenge. Design your effect so that there is no reason to suspect the deck. Any effects where you use a marked deck should be done in a manner that raises no suspicion about the deck.

I agree with you on not raising suspicion. For me the issue is that in my area a magician once performed magic for a large number of people exactly as you're describing (presenting it as a challenge) and hoped for social status. Unfortunately, he used a marked deck, made it obvious, got caught, and now, there's a general distrust of any deck of cards that is pulled out.

That distrust is something I've been working to eliminate but until that happens fully, any marked decks I use have to be cleverly concealed.

 

[RealityOne]

...any marked decks I use have to be cleverly concealed.

If you have the ability to force, peek or control a card, you don't need to use a marked deck for what most people use it for. The challenge is to use it in a way that doesn't scream MARKED DECK. The "You Pick My Card" trick is a perfect example of that. Also, using a marked deck in conjunction with a memorized stack is deadly.

The funny thing was that when I got the Ultimate Marked Deck, I looked at it for 15 minutes to try and find the markings before I gave up and looked at the instructions.

 

[Antonio Diavolo]

Don't worry about it. Now you know the details and have some advice if you do decide to buy the marked version. Also, that makes it even better in my opinion since you have a V1 Series 1800 deck (you have something to switch out for the marked V2 if the spectator wants to examine the deck).

I've never had the issue of people wanting to examine my deck (heh). I've gotten "wait are all the cards the same?" after doing my ACR a few times but the few times it happened, the people don't even seem to believe that. It's just the only explanation they could come up with.
I use the invisible deck all the time and no one has ever suspected it's a trick deck.

Also, the best marking systems are the ones that are invisible unless you know where to look. Which is most marking systems.

 

[Antonio Diavolo]

If you have the ability to force, peek or control a card, you don't need to use a marked deck for what most people use it for. The challenge is to use it in a way that doesn't scream MARKED DECK. The "You Pick My Card" trick is a perfect example of that. Also, using a marked deck in conjunction with a memorized stack is deadly.

The funny thing was that when I got the Ultimate Marked Deck, I looked at it for 15 minutes to try and find the markings before I gave up and looked at the instructions.

In my opinion, a force is much more effective than a marked deck. The predictions you can do will seem much more impossible as you have knowledge of the card long before they pick it. But there are a few tricks you can do with a marked deck that you could also do with a force. You really have to sell it though. I'm personally a fan of doing the whole "Sherlock Holmes deduction" where it's like "your eyebrow twitched when I said spades, so it's a spade..." and so on.

Is the marking system on the Ultimate Marked Deck the one where you can literally see the value of the card on the back without having to remember some sort of code (Like Daniel Madison's marked decks or the homemade marked Bicycles)? Also, is the deck worth it? Because it's like a $40 deck isn't it?

Also, a marked deck with a stack...my god, the possibilities...

 

[RealityOne]

Is the marking system on the Ultimate Marked Deck the one where you can literally see the value of the card on the back without having to remember some sort of code (Like Daniel Madison's marked decks or the homemade marked Bicycles)? Also, is the deck worth it? Because it's like a $40 deck isn't it?

Also, a marked deck with a stack...my god, the possibilities...

Clearly marked if you know what to look for. No code. It is $29 on Penguin. Worth it? Depends on what you will use it for.

 

[Antonio Diavolo]

Clearly marked if you know what to look for. No code. It is $29 on Penguin. Worth it? Depends on what you will use it for.

Oh okay I think I know the marking system then. I’m going to pass on it for now but using a marked deck is definitely something I’ll have to think about.

 

[Dragonbones]

On another forum I've seen complaints about the old Ellusionist 1800 deck markings, which were FAR too hard to read even if you knew what to look for, and comments that they later replaced them with more readable ones in a different location. I’m being intentionally vague so as not to reveal secrets. The nature of the complaints (and the name 1800) seem to match exactly what I got with a Bicycle Series 1800 deck from an online seller in Taiwan yesterday. So, first off, I wonder if anyone knows whether Bicycle bought the rights to the Ellusionist 1800 marked deck (MD) and reprinted it.

The aging on the cards is fantastic and they’ll be great for ghostly Halloween magic and spiritualist stuff…but I stared at them for 15 minutes and actually could not discern any markings, unlike those on Bicycle MD and Cohort Ghost, which are very visible once you know where to look and what to look for, but hidden JUST well enough to be useful with any sufficiently naïve audience (I don’t mean that pejoratively). I know what kind of things to look for other than overt stuff like Bike MD have, having read a bit about the history on this topic and inspected various systems and decks (I own nine). And could not find any on the Bicycle 1800s. I of course did riffles. Looked for all kinds of possible systems. Nope.

The seller even insisted they were unmarked! LOL

With the naked eye, I was only able to eventually identify one anomaly that was present on three particular cards but only when the card was oriented one way, not another. Finally, with a magnifying glass (I kid you not) and the help of an online video, half an hour later (really, maybe an hour including searching) I was able to start finding some of the faint traces that they *imagine* to be marks. This is not hyperbole. They are nearly indetectable EVEN to the owner of the deck after being shown what to look for. They could not possibly be useful to a magician, because as you all know, you have to be able to glance only very briefly at marks and identify them instantly, rather than staring for several minutes (literally), frowning, then getting it right only 50% of the time. After several eye-straining hours of training myself, I can now pick out and read 80% (I counted) but it takes me about 7 seconds of intense staring (I timed it so as to be sure I was not exaggerating) and then going back through the remaining 20% I can get about half right the 2nd time, and so on. And then I just have to stop, with serious eye strain. Certain card values and suits are harder than others to discern, and there are also certain cards for which one or the other is even fainter and nearer impossible to read. The faintness of the markings is such that they are on that very edge of 'Am I imagining that this is a mark, or really seeing one?'

I cannot know whether I unfortunately got a counterfeit copy or a real one, having purchased it online in Taiwan. There are sellers of both for e.g. Bicycle MD, and most but not all will tell you whether you’re getting a factory original or copy. Of course I want the real deal and don’t want to support counterfeiters (probably in China). If anyone has a legit copy of the Bike 1800s and could swap scans with me by PM I’d like to be able to verify whether the problem is the marking system or degraded quality in an unintentionally purchased counterfeit copy. If the latter, I want to complain to the seller and ask for a refund. I'd buy from a more reliable source with reasonable S&H to Taiwan if they were in stock, e.g. at Penguin, but often I'm stuck buying locally.

I wonder whether anyone has purchased them and knows what I’m talking about. I think I’ll have to re-mark them in various ways if I’m to use them as MD. I’d love to be able to put up a scan of the three above card backs to show what I’m talking about but I imagine it would be disallowed on this forum (I’d like to know from mods whether it would be ok or not).

I tried to post this very last night but the post wasn’t there in the morning. I can’t recall whether the tab crashed (my PC is ancient) and I was too tired to repost it (I’m on very heavy medication, some of which interferes with consolidation of short-term into long-term memory overnight) or what, or whether a mod might have removed it with no comment or message to me (I imagine not).

Would it be OK to post a scan showing the markings and comparing the three systems, or is that considered revealing too much for this forum? I imagine the answer is the latter so I’ve not posted it.

Anyway, if you get this deck, get if for the aged look, which is awesome, not the MD, which is unusable. There's no chance in Hades that an audience member could find markings on it, even if you handed them a magnifying glass and gave them 10 minutes to search.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

There are actually 4 versions of the 1800s decks. The first version was unmarked and printed on the 'web' press or whatever they used to call it. The second version was printed on the higher quality press and also unmarked. Then there's a marked version which everyone complained about, and finally the 4th version where the marks were made more visible.

If I recall correctly the first markings were in the upper left and lower right corners, and the second version of the markings were in the middle to the left and right. I might be mixing that system up with another one, though, I haven't worked there in a while now.

 

[Dragonbones]

Thanks, WitchDocIsIn; this (Bicycle Series 1800) is definitely the 3rd version, but after a magnified scan I suspect it is a photographed then reprinted Chinese rip-off copy, because (1) at high magnification there's photo-style pixellation rather than clean printing, and (2) this is beyond a level people would complain about due to the minute size and aged nature of the marks (which I assume would not have been hard to read WITH a magnifying glass). It takes that and then degrades it further through poor reproduction (such that some of the marks are still not legible with magnification). I'll have to mark it myself using traditional methods, although due to the noise added by the aging effect plus the degrading of the poor reproduction, I've just come up with a nice way to modify it that goes beyond the traditional pip blackouts. If anyone (e.g. someone who has the 3rd version and wants to re-mark it) wants to see it, drop me your email address in a private conversation here and I'll send a scan, as I have been unable to upload pics from my PC within private messages here (I seem to only be able to do so in the public forum posts).

I've seen the 4th version. I would actually like something a bit less obvious than both that and Bicycle's Ultimate Marked Deck style, e.g. it would be nice if Bike kept the marks for the suits the same size (or increased them slightly) but shrank the remaining system by 1/4 to 1/3. The non-suit marks are more than large enough to identify at a quick glance.