"Cosmo's Card Box" by Cosmo Solano
Suggested Retail USD$19.95
Available from your favorite dealer
In a Blink: 9 Out of 10

"Cosmo's Card Box", a new trick from Cosmo Solano, is an excellent utility device that is at once devilishly simple and wonderfully subtle and will find its place in many a performer's pocket.

I've been using one for years, if that tells you anything. Well, anything other than the fact I love the thing to pieces.

Think of it as a card box -- not a "card box", but the magic-set kind of "card box" -- built inside of a card box. Or maybe a Himber wallet built into a card box. Or maybe... Oh, I give up. Look, it's a great, openly sneaky device that switches a playing card (or small packet of cards), business cards, bills, or the like quickly and easily.

How easily? How quickly?

Put a card in the card box.

I told you it was quick and easy. You don't even have to close the lid of the box if you don't want to (though I usually do; I like to think it makes things just a wee bit more theatrically impossible). The handling is smooth and cunning. In other words, this is damn near as perfect a switching device as you could ask for.

What you get with "Cosmo's Card Box" is the box (mine is a red Bicycle box, some assembly required), three great routines that can stand by themselves or serve as springboards to your own material, and -- something I really didn't expect -- complete instructions for building your own box from scratch.

I can't understate how impressed I am with that. Solano could have gone the scam route here, given us the box which, like any card box, is prone to wear and tear, and made us go after replacements. Come on, you and I both know that's how it works, right? Not in Solano's mind. I have, thanks to his care of the needs of customers, built boxes so far in Squeezer, Assassin, and Bee and, as one wears out, I'll need never to buy a thing to replace any of them. Big thumbs up to Solano for keeping an eye out for his customers.

And a big thumbs up to "Cosmo's Card Box". This one is a worker and a solid keeper.

"Cosmo's Card Box" by Cosmo Solano
In a Blink: 9 Out of 10

Practicality: 9
It's a card box which can function as one and takes up no more space in the pocket than a regular card box would. It's truly one of those "packs small/plays big" things that is worth carrying around. The only thing that could make it better would be to have it examinable, but with a bit of audience-management skill and the right routine, it's unsuspected anyway.

Workmanship: 10
You'll have to do some assembly, but it's minor and what you're given to assembly is well done.

Documentation: 10
Solano goes beyond the pale here. You get the instructions for construction, a handful of really good routines, and, more, easy ways to create more of the thing when yours gets a little too worn from much use. You'll have no problem with any piece of this here.

Effect: 10
It depends on what you do with it, but the routines Solano supplies are good, solid routines which illicit great responses.

Presentation: 10
Again, it all depends on what you do with it, but it allows for some of the cleanest, open handlings of some effects than you could ask for.


Shane

Available direct from your favorite dealer. Dealers, please contact Murphy's Magic Supplies, Inc. toll-free at 1-800-853-7403 or visit Murphy's Magic Supplies website.