Michael Skinner’s Intimate Magic by Jeff Busby

Michael Skinner's Intimate Magic by Jeff Busby
Second printing, 1982, published by Jeff Busby Magic, Inc.

Please note: While this item is new and unused, it has been sitting in storage for decades, so issues such as rusted staples or bowed pages may be present.

From Jeff Busby Magic, Inc. advertisement in Genii magazine, April 1986:

Michael Skinner is the Resident Magician and star entertainer at the plush Lily Langtree restaurant in the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas – a position that he has held for the past eight years. Michael is one of the very few magicians to have won the coveted Magic Castle Close-Up Magician of the Year award twice and one of the very few close-up workers to have appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show twice. He's recognized by magicians around the world as a top-flight entertainer and technician and is considered by many to be the world's foremost close-up magician.

MICHAEL SKINNER'S INTIMATE MAGIC contains 11 close-up and stand-up effects with cards, coins, balls, rope, and cigarette papers. Each routine is practical and effective – professional magic from a top professional magician.

The first section of this book details 5 clever routines suitable for either stand-up or platform work. Included is the Thought Projection Pack in which two spectators select five cards each from a deck that has been shuffled and cut by them. The first spectator takes part in an entertaining "lie detector" test in which you not only reveal the card that he lied on, but also name his mental selection. The second spectator concentrates on his cards – you proceed to name all of his cards, under impossible conditions, one by one. There is also Michael's beautiful Slow Motion Coin Vanish in which a half dollar is vanished and reproduced under almost test conditions with no rapid motions or suspicious moves and with the hands being shown empty on both sides. Next is a stand-up coin routine in which a coin is produced magically, changes instantaneously from copper to silver and back several times, and then culminates in the production of a jumbo coin from nowhere. Michael Skinner and Tony Slydini have collaborated on a three-phase Cut and Restored Rope routine which is covered next with all of the subtleties included. Rounding out the first section is a comedy coin routine in which a half dollar is vanished and reproduced in several amusing and very surprising ways.

The close-up magic section includes Michael's beautiful Bewildering Ball Vase routine, explained here correctly for the first time and including Dr. Sawa's surprise color change climax. Repeat Power Poker is an entertaining and easy to do Poker Deal in two phases, in which the spectator shuffles the deck, and yet you still unerringly deal five incredible Poker hands. The Transfixed Card is Michael's personal method for the Card on the Ceiling. Of this routine, Charlie Miller says, "I have seen Michael work this trick several times and it is most effective. There are no false moves. Everything flows smoothly." All-Fair Cards Through Newspaper is Michael's treatment of this classic plot. The handling is particularly fair in that each card is cleanly shown before it penetrates the newspaper to join its mates. Michael's Torn and Restored Cigarette Paper routine is very much different from any other published version. In this superb routine, a single sheet is torn and then restored, the restored sheet torn into two – each changes into a whole sheet, and then one is torn and restored again in the fairest fashion. In Michael's unique Cigarette Paper Transposition two marked sheets of cigarette paper change places under the spectator's closest scrutiny.