Hello guys,
thanks for making my afternoon so funny
Who would have imagined a few months ago that today, the great Lee Asher would ask me to come on the forum and discuss with you about my strange way of cleaning cards ? Not me.
Who would have believed that i would be working with Lee to make the most definitive guide about Golden Nugget playing cards ? Not me.
Life is funny.
A few months ago, i came here to ask people about Golden Nugget. As beginner magician, I was fond of these cards as well as all other Nuggets from the 60’s and 70’s. I was surprised that not too many people were collecting them and had information about them.
So i began looking for these cards everywhere, especially on ebay. And i began buying some. And trying to understand the history of these cards. And i made mistakes. And i bought expensive cards that were not this good. But i also made good deals, buying cheap cards which were very old and never played.
And i understood when the classical finish of Jerry’s Nugget stopped being used and when the Golden Nugget cards stopped being legendary to just become really good.
The problem was that sometimes i had < 1970 decks that would not shuffle correctly. If you have some of these decks maybe you would compare shuffling them to shuffling sheets of sandpaper. Do you feel what i mean ? if you understand then you have already bought old, dirty decks
The first deck i had with this particular feel was a 1970 Hotel Thunderbird Bee deck. An absolutely not interesting deck. It was awful to shuffle. A big piece of old cards which looked correct but felt ugly. I did not care about this deck and put it on the bottom of my card box.
Then i bought a very nice green Golden Nugget of 1967. I was really happy to have such an old deck with the great finish and this beautiful color. But when i received it, it was not nice to shuffle. It was not as ugly as the Hotel Thunderbird but almost. And of course, i had an almost new black Golden Nugget from the same year to compare with. The black was great whereas the green was a sh*t.
Then i asked people on a french forum about magic about a way to clean cards and make them become as new again and the story began. Sorry for being long about telling you the background but i think it was important to tell you that before.
In that forum, there were discussion and someone talked about the banana. And that way of cleaning the cards.
Is it a joke or not ? i don’t know. On the french forum some people were serious, other were laughing. Some people were talking about even more stupid ways of cleaning the cards. It was more a comic topic than a serious one.
In magic don’t we say that sometimes we just have to believe in something to make it happen ?
I tried the method on the Hotel Thunderbird deck. And as strange as it may be, it worked. No smell of banana on the cards, no (visible) oil on the cards, just a better deck after the work. I used two bananas to do that, and the skin of the bananas after the work was dirty.
So i decided to try it on my nice expensive green Golden Nugget. I tried on 10 cards. Shuffled the ten cards and compared to 10 dirty cards. Even a children could feel the difference. Even a children could tell that the old deck could only be used to feed the trashcan whereas the cleaned one was nice to play with.
After that i did that work on a few other decks, always with nice results. And talked about that to Lee. And decided to make a video of it because my friend Lee was not believing me.
The video is a comic video. I can imagine some people won’t believe me, or other people (collectors) will say that it’s evil to do such things to $50+ cards. I understand you, that’s why i wanted the video to be more a comic thing than a very technical and serious video. Take it as a joke or not. Tell me i’m a bad collector or bad magician (i know that
it’s easy to see).
is this secret i’m talking about a real secret ? of course not
is this video a joke ? maybe
But if you find in your boxes an old deck of 1967 Golden Nugget that makes you cry when you shuffle it, just try my method on 10 cards, and tell me. Maybe you would understand it may not be a joke.
Sorry for the long article, i hope you won’t ban me from the forum for doing such nasty things
(and to be serious, the thing i truly agree about what people say in this thread is that it may clean the cards because of the texture of the banana skin but what about the oil that would go from the banana to the card ? I totally agree with that and that may be the thing that makes my method totally not usable. And also i only did that on old <1970 cards, i never tried on Air Cushion Bicycle cards for example, maybe that’s the very old finish that makes my method seems to work)
(and i’m about to clean a 1966 red GN deck, if you want me to make photos or tests about before and after, tell me)
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