Many ways have been figured and produced for this effect of a selected card being found in a rubber banded pocketbook, each getting more complicated than the others, and generally losing sight of the very important fact that you can’t waste any time in opening up the pocketbook or metal plates without hurting the effect. It just doesn’t do, as far as professional work around the clubs is concerned.

After all, the only thing remembered by the onlookers is the fact that the card travels into the wallet from the deck. No one ever is deceived into thinking that it is anything but sleight-of-hand, so the only thing left is to do it fast and clean, getting it over as directly as possible.

My excuse for putting this on paper is that I’ve used it steadily, and there is no preparation or setting of things. Just the wallet in your pocket. It has always been used as an incidental in a routine of table and close-up card effects, it will just be as startling to the people who don’t know it (moreso because of the speed), and a puzzler to those who do know it because of the extra encircling of the pocketbook with the rubber band.

In a pocket easily accessible to the hand with which you do your palming, put a regular three fold wallet, inside of which is a two of spades or clubs, and around which is a rubber band running both ways. With a pin or knife point, put a nice rough scratch across one of the pips on the card. It will look like an accidental dig.

In the deck you use, find the duplicate of this card and mark it in the same way. Now go ahead with your tricks. When ready, force the card and ask the selector to look at it. Have it returned, you shuffling and bringing it to the top of the deck. Now look at the spectator and ask him to name the card. And as you finish asking that, and he starts to answer, you palm off the card, reach into your pocket, leave the card behind, and come out with the pocketbook which you toss to the table as he names the card. Hand him the deck which he looks through, saying the card is not there. Then very openly open the pocketbook after removing the band, and reveal the card inside.

Without it ever being mentioned, the spectator will remember the dig mark.

You fool a magician because, although he may know you palm a card away, he thinks you put it in the pocketbook, but gives you credit for something new because the band goes around the pocketbook both ways. And the person who doesn’t know the trick is just as much fooled as he would be with any other way.

Why work hard when it isn’t necessary ?