Meir’s Muses
MyMagic eNewsletter #763
June 12, 2019
The past few weeks I have been visiting a Jewelry Factory in New Jersey that is owned by a friend of mine. We are working on several new projects that I hope to have ready by Magic Live! Although it is looking like the big one will not be ready in time.
As I was walking around, I noticed a few gold question mark lapel pins. I asked him who he sells these to? It turns out that there is a demand for them during Halloween. People who dress up as the Riddler get them for their lapel!
If you ever see older photos of me performing, you will notice a large and obnoxious question mark on my lapel. At the time I thought it was cool and it really worked when table-hopping and for walk-around at parties because the question mark was subtle proof that I was a magician and not a panhandler.
As I was watching him make them, I could not believe all the labor that goes into making a tiny pin. Let me bore you with the process: The question mark is first cast in copper (I could be remembering wrong, it could have been stamped). A post is then soldered on each one (followed by boiling in acid and then washed several times). It is then plated in nickel (turns out that gold looks better when plated over nickel). It is then plated in 24 Karat Gold and finally re-washed and cleaned before being packaged. I also left out a bunch of smaller steps that would bore you even further.
If that much labor went into making magic tricks the prices would skyrocket, yet this sells for less than a fancy deck of cards!
I was able to purchase a bunch of them. These are tiny and subtle with an overall size of a half inch by a quarter inch and includes one of the deluxe locking backs which makes them almost impossible to fall off.
Get a Question Mark Pin: HERE.
I was also able to get a few more of the Silver Walking Liberty Chained routines in stock. If you were thinking about getting one… now is the time.
Get a Silver Chained: HERE.
In the last newsletter I mentioned that Chained was Ted Bogusta’s third best creation. Since then several people asked me what were the first two. Even Ted asked.
In my opinion:
1) KFC Coins: HERE.
2) Ringmaster Coins (perpetually out of stock): HERE.
3) Chained: HERE.
Until next time,
Meir
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