The Pre­mon­i­tion Box Story

I ab­so­lutely hate writ­ing about this, but then we live in a mod­ern world, where copy­ing stuff is the nor­mal thing to do. I was ripped-off so many times that I don’t want to count any­more. I am sick of it.

But re­cently I learned of an­oth­er copy that I really hate. It is about my be­loved ‘Pre­mon­i­tion Box’. I cre­ated this tool in 1983, whilst be­ing in Ber­lin and work­ing for Ted Les­ley in his com­pany. In these times, Ted per­formed Ed­die Joseph’s fab­ulous ef­fect Pre­mon­i­tion, which is the way I learned about this trick.

After hav­ing per­formed this many times, I had the idea to elim­in­ate the stor­age of the two decks in the pock­ets and use a spe­cially con­struc­ted card box. I built my first mod­el from card­board. Here is a pic­ture of that ori­gin­al box, the moth­er of them all (yes, I still have it and use it).

I con­struc­ted the spe­cial in­let, which cre­ates the il­lu­sion of only one deck be­ing in play. The oth­er one is clev­erly hid­den un­der the side pan­el. The im­port­ant point is the ad­di­tion of the dice and the pen­cil. Both are ac­tu­ally cut in half to save space for the deck un­der­neath. These half-cut items are what makes the box so de­cept­ive and they are truly unique fea­tures which dis­tin­guishes this box from oth­er deck switch­ing boxes.

The box looks the same on both sides and de­pend­ing on which side you open, there will be either deck no. 1 or deck no. 2 show­ing up. This is the prin­ciple and the con­struc­tion of my box.

I showed this box for the first time in a lec­ture at the Itali­an na­tion­al con­ven­tion in 1986 or 1987. So ma­gi­cians have seen it since. I also did it in a lec­ture in Lon­don for Ron Mac­Mil­lan’s day way back at the end of the 80ties.

The Pre­mon­i­tion Box is also ex­plained on my Eng­lish video tapes series ‘Treas­ures’ Vol. 1 (https://www.murphysmagic.com/product.aspx?id=52471). So there should be enough in­form­a­tion around, even in Eng­lish spoken circles.

In 1993, I pub­lished the box in my Ger­man lec­ture notes. Here I had sim­pli­fied the con­struc­tion of the in­let. I think this was even bet­ter than the first ver­sion be­cause there was no rim around the in­let. The L‑shaped in­let did the job well.

 

In 1992 the pub­lic­a­tion of my very first book in Ger­man lan­guage was due. It was called ‘Ein Profi packt aus’ and it con­tained the deck switch­ing box, of course. You can check this as well in Denis Behr’s data­base (http://archive.denisbehr.de/show.php?book=938&highlight=45677).

It should be ob­vi­ous that I am the cre­at­or of this baby. The con­tract about the book, in­clud­ing the world­wide ex­clus­ive man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­bu­tion rights for all the tricks and gim­micks in the book was done between Rudolf Braun­müller and me. After his passing, his wid­ow Helga Braun­müller and her daugh­ter Claudia are still the copy­right hold­ers. That means no one is al­lowed to pro­duce and mar­ket this item (not even me without ask­ing per­mis­sion) ex­cept the Braun­müllers.

Now I found this in Joe Stevens Ma­gic Em­pori­um:

I could­n’t be­lieve what I saw be­cause I have known Joe Stevens Em­pori­um since the time I star­ted to work for Har­old Voit in the ZZM in the 80ties. I al­ways thought them to be trust­worthy deal­ers, not selling any rip-offs. I was wrong.

So yes­ter­day I pos­ted this on the Face­book in the hope to make people aware of this il­leg­al theft of ideas. It cre­ated some stir. After my harsh words against Joe Stevens Ma­gic Em­pori­um, Mark Stevens im­me­di­ately called me back and we settled the is­sue on good terms. I even bought the last three pieces of this rip-off he had on stock for my­self. Strange, to buy back one’s own cre­ation! But then I will have the proof in my hands. Maybe the work­man­ship is good, then I have an­oth­er work­ing box in my tools box.

Mark told me that they at the Em­pori­um do not know each and every trick out of the hun­dreds of tricks they have to handle and in stock. So, ba­sic­ally, he had no idea that I am the in­vent­or of the box. Des­pite the fact that I be­lieve a deal­er should know the stuff he is selling, I ac­cep­ted his apo­logy and we settled the is­sue. I send him a copy of the lec­ture notes and now for me the thing with Stevens Ma­gic Em­pori­um is good.

But then I saw this in an In­done­sian shop:

And, of course, the Pen­guins also are in the boat:

 

 

 

It ap­pears that Stevens is not the only one. Sadly, quite a few deal­ers here in Europe, which I con­sidered friends, also went into the trap and are of­fer­ing the rip-off. I asked Mark Stevens about the supplier/manufacturer, but he did­n’t know ex­actly from whom he got it. He men­tioned Murphy’s Ma­gic Sup­plies. A check on their web­site re­vealed that they in­deed list this trick, and it is the same as on the In­do­ma­gic­land web­site:

 

In all ad­vert­ise­ments, there is ab­so­lutely no men­tion­ing of my name as the cre­at­or. Des­pite the fact that the concept was shown on the Treas­ures tapes years earli­er, nobody in this ‘ma­gic com­munity’ no­ticed, as usu­al. Quite the con­trary: when read­ing the ad­vert­ise­ment of the In­do­ma­gic­land web­site, you might come the the con­clu­sion that this box was in­ven­ted by In­do­ma­gic (‘Pre­mon­i­tion Box by In­do­ma­gic­land’). This makes me feel sad and angry.

Be­cause it does­n’t make any sense to go into court with a com­pany in In­done­sia, there will be noth­ing left that I can do: just watch oth­er ma­gic deal­ers with no eth­ics con­tin­ue selling my ideas and mak­ing a profit.

This is not a ‘ma­gic com­munity’, but an as­sort­ment of crap people with no eth­ics and con­science. It is a shame and one of the reas­ons that I will re­tract from this scene. In the fu­ture, I will con­cen­trate on writ­ing this blog for the ‘com­munity’, in or­der to pub­lish my ideas and there­fore prove that I am the ori­gin­at­or. There are lots of very nice people out there in ma­gic as well, and I don’t want them to be pun­ished be­cause of the lousy deal­ers we have. I will write the blog for these nice people and con­tin­ue to give them ideas.

Will someone think of giv­ing a com­pens­a­tion to me for their sales? Prob­ably not. As usu­al. Take an idea, rip it off, man­u­fac­ture it and sell it. Don’t give a shit on the cre­at­or. Think of your own profit. We are a ‘com­munity’ and a deal­er must please and sat­is­fy his cus­tom­ers.

Don’t ex­pect me to come to that con­ven­tion any­more, show­ing my stuff and then hav­ing it ripped off.

I am fed up with this.

Don’t pass it on!