Auction of Ricky Jay's astounding collection of magic books, ephemera, and curiosities

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Originally published at: Auction of Ricky Jay's astounding collection of magic books, ephemera, and curiosities | Boing Boing

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Is there a way to view the books online? (ETA - on the auction site?)

I bet the author of the majority of The Shadow pulp novels, Walter B. Gibson, has books in there. He was a well respected magician in his own right, and worked with Blackstone and Houdini. He wrote lots of books on magic, and ghost wrote books for
Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Harry Blackstone, Sr., and Joseph Dunninger.

I just found out looking up the books, that he invented the “nickles to dimes” trick - I have that trick!

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I’m hopping that books like these that are not widely available are scanned and made available, at the very least at a university.

I remember a magician explaining that the differences in editions of titles printed and reprinted over time could be important, because the changes to the texts show how society had changed and become “immune” to some presentations of the illusions, tricks, etc, or that certain presentations need to be changed due to social conventions and understanding.

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Sad to hear he died. He was amazing in David Mamet’s “House of Games.”

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This is sad, actually. In one of the documentaries about Ricky Jay, he fumes about some collection of magic documentation that is going to be sold. He believes it should be kept together. I think it was eventually all sold to David Blaine.

My understanding is his collection is top class, and it’s unfortunate, but inevitable, that it’s going to get chopped up and lost to the wind.

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I’m fairly certain it was David Copperfield who snapped up that stuff for his private museum in Vegas. Also- if I recall correctly - Ricky Jay also sold off some of his own stuff to Copperfield at some point when he needed money. He did apparently put in a stipulation that he could access the material for reference when he wanted.

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I hope it goes to good homes. Ricky Jay was one of the greatest scholars of magic, ever.

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all his acting was pretty solid. he was also in Mamet’s Red Belt and I saw an episode of X Files he was in on tv last month or so.

I read Cards As Weapons when I was in high school. He was one of the good guys

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“I’m a publicist, not a magician” – Ricky Jay in Mystery Men

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I kind of nerded out when he showed up as a card sharp in Deadwood.

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