Cards as Weapons, by Ricky Jay
Amusing and useful illustrated book showing how to throw playing cards better - subtitled “A Treatise on the art of throwing, scaling, juggling, boomeranging and manipulating ordinary playing cards with particular emphasis on impressing one’s friends and providing a deadly yet inexpensive means of self-defence”. The book, a perennial Ebay special and Library sale ‘sleeper’, is now being seen as a self help book that ‘changes lives’ - several comments at Amazon, not entirely tongue in cheek, attest to this.
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VALUE? Copies show up a bit creased at around $200 and twice that for fine copies. Signed should show up as Jay is pretty approachable and was often seen at book fairs etc., being a serious book collector. God bless him. Magicians are often pretty serious book collectors - at one time one heard quite a bit about the highly acquisitive David Copperfield and his awesome collection. It is worth noting that there is also a hardback of the book that is much prized and dealers (who are not mad) sometimes ask $1000 or more for it, although a cautious punter could probably pick one up in the $600 to $800 range - in a jacket.
Guess who has two thumbs and scored a copy of the paperback for $35?
THIS GUY!
Also, the book has photos of a nekkid woman demonstrating card-throwing techniques.
It reads a lot like The Areas of My Expertise, by John Hodgman, and How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening, by David Rees.
But it was written in 1977!
Ricky Jay, always ahead of the curve!
More: Cards as Weapons, by Ricky Jay
Also: en.wikipedia.org