– Intro / Brief Overview
What’s up everybody and welcome to Magic For Beginners, my name is Keith and in today’s video we’re going to be doing a magic review of Showcase 2.0 by Thomas Sealey and Mark Traversoni from Saturn Magic.
– What Is The Routine/Trick?
So what is Showcase 2.0, I hear you say, this is a credit card holder for the back of your phone or phone case and it allows you to secretly hold a full playing card to be released at any tine you want. This is something to add onto the classic Card to phone routine with an easier and better way to produce a card from your phone screen. If you want a EDC magic trick, then this is perfect for you. You can even take a spectators signed card and have that loaded ready to release whenever you wanted.
– How Much Does It Cost?
On Saturn Magic, this is currently priced at £44.99, but I think I paid £40 for this at the Blackpool Magic Convention this year. For some people it may seem like a lot of money, but for what you’re getting and how easy this is to use and how you can always have it on you as it’s part of your phone, then it’s a no brainer. One part of Showcase is a Vulkit credit card holder which itself it just under £10, so you’re technically paying £35 for this, as you can use the credit card holder to actually hold your credit cards.
Before we head on, let’s get on with a quick performance of Showcase, so you can get a overview of how it looks performed in the real world.
– What Do You Get With It?
So once you’ve bought Showcase, what do you get with it? You get the white box with the sticker on the front to saw what the magic trick is and it’s got ad copy of Showcase by Thomas Sealey and designed and developed by Mark Travesoni and Mark Infiniti from Saturn Magic. Inside the box you get the gimmick itself, some sticky strips to attach the gimmick to the phone or phone case of your choice, along with a piece of card with a link to the tutorial and a bit of plastic to aid in loading the gimmick, but I’ve never had to use it personally.
For the tutorial, you’re lead to a page on Saturn Magic and on there, there’s three YouTube videos which contain the tutorial as one video and two videos talking about any troubleshoot tips etc. The tutorial is just under 39 minutes long and features new and old video footage of Showcase, as this used to come as a full case version and this is now a universal fit version, so they’ve got the setup of the new version in the video along with some old footage from the original tutorial too.
What you don’t get with it as noted in the product page, if you want to do card to phone, then you need to purchase this separately and I think it’s about £5 or so which isn’t expensive at all, but I do love the alternative method of recording a video of yourself or some one else holding a card and throwing it down at the camera and having the card come out of the bottom of the phone as the video is doing so.
– Is It Easy To Perform and where can you perform it?
It is super easy to perform, after a quick watch of the tutorial of how to set up the gimmick and apply to your phone or case then you’re good to go. The method to learn is very easy and once you know how to do it, you can easily do it. I’d say that there’s a knack to knowing how far something has to happen for the trick to work, but after a few times, you’ll have that done. As the name of the trick says too, you can show your phone case front and back and no one will be able to see anything so you’re covered for all angles and people can be infront, behind and either side and that won’t matter at all.
You can do a lot of different routines with this such as the basic card to phone version, the video version when you drop the card, you can also have a specific card in mind in the gimmick and force that card from either a deck of cards or use magician’s choice to get the spectator to pick one mentally and so many other applications you can use.
– Can You Inspect It?
Can you inspect it? That’s a yes and a no. I wouldn’t allow some one to look at the phone and gimmick for a long time as they may be able to figure something out from it, but I’ve performed it a few times and people have asked to look at the phone and they have and couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary so was even more confused.
– Is It Well Made?
Is it well made? Yes, it is indeed well made. The Vulkit credit card holder is a leather material so that feels nice and holds up well to wear and tear too. As with a lot of the Saturn Magic things that I’ve come across, the gimmick is 3d printed, so it’s nice and light but also durable so would last a long time too. It does come with that card loader plastic to help with a load, but I can easily load a card without the need for that due to the design of the gimmick.
– Positives
As stated in the introduction, this is a perfect EDC as it’s always attached to your phone or phone case, so aslong as you have your phone with you, you have Showcase with you and if you always keep a card loaded, then you can produce this at any point in time.
Due to the gimmick being able to hold and produce a full playing card, you don’t need to do a Mercury fold of their playing card to pull out from the phone, you don’t even need to palm a card away or have a card hidden. You can show your phone and hands in full plain view before doing this.
The locking for the card is great too and due to the nature of how it’s done, you’re in full control of if the card is locked or not so it’ll always work when you want it to.
– Negatives
As stated in the tutorial, when I got my Showcase, it was a bit tough for the card to come out but it just takes using it a few times to allow the channel to work correctly and you can also just put a card in and out to try and make this smoother. Sometimes it still get a bit stuck, but it’s not really notable to people, as generally all of the card comes out, but just sometimes not as smooth.
It’s also due to note that this needs to be actually stuck to a phone or phone case and it’s a MagSafe style card holder which I originally thought it was and could be removed etc, so I’d pick a nice plain case that you like and stick it to that. You can remove the gimmick and put it on another case etc, but you may need to remove the sticky tape and apply new tape to ensure it sticks.
I remember seeing this a while back when Mark and Mark from Saturn Magic came to the Middlesbrough Circle to lecture and knew that it would be fantastic as an EDC and after buying this at Blackpool, I was right and absolutely love it and it’s something I can definitely recommend to people.
If you’re into phone magic similar to this then why not check out the magic review of Anyweb2 by Magic Pro Ideas on the channel which should be appearing on the screen to allow you to force any photo you want on a spectator’s phone and until next time, see ya!
