The Treasure Map That Already Exists

There is a question I have been hearing for years, time and again: “Where do I find good material?” And the answer I want to give is so simple it almost hurts.

The best tricks already exist. They are in books you probably already own, or in magazines you once leafed through and then put back on the shelf. In e-books that have been sitting on your hard drive for years. The problem was never that there isn’t enough good material. The problem has always been knowing where the diamonds lie.

And that is precisely why I want to introduce you to something today that has given me an enormous amount: Mark Elsdon’s “Hidden Gems”.

Elsdon is a British mentalism performer and author whom many of you will know, perhaps through his “Conversation As Mentalism” series or his creations such as B’Voque and Ouroboros. But Hidden Gems is something different. It is not a book of tricks, and Mark doesn’t explain any of his own effects here. Instead, he has done something that is actually so obvious you wonder why no one did it long before now.

He opened his notebooks.

Over decades, Mark has stuck Post-it notes in books, filled margins, marked and catalogued tricks—material he has read, learnt and performed, sometimes over twenty or thirty years. Then he sat down and poured the distillate of this life’s work into a series of e-books: ten volumes plus a dedicated mentalism edition. Each volume contains around a hundred annotated recommendations. Together that amounts to over a thousand hand-picked gems from the printed literature of magic.

I say “annotated recommendations” deliberately, because that is what makes the difference. Mark doesn’t just give you a source reference and leave you to it. He tells you why the trick is special. He tells you whether it suits close-up or stand-up, whether it works better in sessions with fellow magicians or in real performances in front of laypeople. He tells you which version he prefers and why. He points you to the bonus trick sitting right next to it in the same book. And he writes all of this with a passion that is contagious. You’ll find lines like: “I nearly spat my tea out when I first saw this!” or “This has been in my repertoire for almost 30 years.” This is not a catalogue. This is a person sharing his enthusiasm.

What impressed me most about the series is the system behind it. In each volume, Mark deliberately plunders a specific magazine: Apocalypse in the first, MAGIC Magazine in the second, Labyrinth in the third, Richard’s Almanac in the fourth, The Minotaur in the fifth. And in the later volumes he turns to individual authors—Bruce Elliott, Robert Neale, Michael Weber. This is not random; it is a curriculum. Anyone who reads all the volumes receives not just over a thousand recommended tricks but a structured overview of the most important sources in magical literature.

And now comes the point that struck me most.

When you read Hidden Gems, you realise that the vast majority of tricks Mark recommends are in books you either already own or can pick up second-hand for a few pounds. The diamonds are not behind a paywall—they are on your shelf. You just needed to know where to dig.

Mark himself puts it this way: “We truly have access to an embarrassment of riches when it comes to material, which is why it’s all the more disheartening to see so many performers doing the same tricks.”

That is the crux. We have access to a positively embarrassing wealth of outstanding material, and yet most magicians perform the same tricks. Because they follow the hype rather than read the literature. Because they buy what everyone buys instead of discovering what no one else does.

Hidden Gems is an antidote. It is the most practical, accessible guide I know for building a repertoire that is genuinely unique—not by buying the latest download that everyone will know again next week, but by opening the books and magazines you already have and finding things in them that no one else is showing.

Let me give you an example. In volume 2, Mark recommends “Collective Telepathy” by Juan Tamariz, published in the October 2002 issue of Genii Magazine. A routine in which spectators collectively divine the name of a person known only to one person in the room. No stooge, no dual reality. Pure Tamariz genius. Mark saw the routine live and adds a warning: “You might read it and think it’s not as good as I’m making it out to be. Don’t! It IS that good I promise.” This routine sat in a magazine for ten years before Mark saw it performed live. Ten years waiting to be discovered. And that is just one of a thousand.

Or take “Between The Lines” by Michael Murray from volume 1: you hand a spectator a folded page from a book. He describes what he imagines. The page is then unfolded and read aloud, and the text mirrors his thoughts exactly. No switch. Mark: “One of the best tricks ever devised and I guarantee no one you know is doing it.”

That is the whole point. No one is doing it. The material is there, it is brilliant, it is affordable, and still no one shows it. Because no one knows about it. Because it is “hidden in print”, as Mark calls it—right where you should be looking, but almost no one does.

There are people who need the latest release every fortnight. Who follow the algorithm, the hype cycle, the social proof. And there are people who prefer to go their own way—who prefer to open a book rather than buy a download, who have understood that the literature of magic is one of the greatest treasures our hobby has to offer, and that all you have to do is dig it up.

Hidden Gems is made for the second group. And if you have read this far, you probably belong to it.

The e-books are not expensive (Mark even released a hardcover book collecting all ten Hidden Gems in March) and are available directly from Mark Elsdon (https://elsdon.blogspot.com/2026/03/) or from Lybrary.com. But really it is not about the PDFs themselves. It is about what they point to. It is about the books on your shelf, the magazines in your cupboard, the e-books on your hard drive. It is about the riches that are already yours.

You just have to start reading.

See you next time,

Alexander