I got back into magic two years ago after 20 years as well. (I used to do magic for frat parties at the University of Michigan. By the end of the night, the whole crowd was surrounding me. But I digress).

Finding the love and excitement again, I’ve been over-buying. Anything that sounds decent to unbelievable found it’s way into my shopping cart. I’ve spent about $30k on magic in the past two years. Because of that, I also began to feel extremely overwhelmed. Wishing that when you buy a trick, it is matrix’d into your brain and you can perform it perfectly. We all know that’s not the truth. So then the choices of what to practice and what I wanted to perform began.

I decided to have a family Christmas show as my first stint. Only wanting to blow everyone away, I picked the most David Blaine like tricks and learned those. Now, while I did perform decently, I definitely was over ambitious (no pun intended), and was about 70 - 80% skilled with each of these.

Come to last week, I was at a social gathering. Not having time to prepare much, I brought David Stone’s Tool and a deck of cards. Let me tell ya. I blew people away for 2 hours just doing ambitious card, two card monte, Think of One, and using Tool to produce their signed card after they shuffled the deck. That was it. Four tricks. Over and over for different little crowds.

My point is, don’t feel overwhelmed. Learn a handful of tricks and get them down the best you can. Then, just add. One by one, learn something new. A new trick, a new slight, a new utility. Whatever. It’s a long life. You have time. And I’m guessing you currently have the skills to knocks people’s socks off.

Yeah, but consider also inflation over all those intervening years.

Sure, look at what any given trick cost in those old magic catalogs, compared to today. Seems cheap now, huh?

But then also look at what minimum wage was back then, compared to today. (A dollar per hour, or even less!)

Lots of tricks were, and in fact still are, just about an hour’s (or even two hours’) wages — both then, and now.

(Example: In 1957, a Burger King Whopper cost just 37 cents. Where I live now, a Whopper is almost 7 bucks — plus tax. And in some states today, minimum wage is barely over $7 per hour.)

I know - just mentioned - 86 in June ------76 years in Magic

Hello there,

First of all, see it as a hobby, and a hobby should be fun.
Secondly start with a few self working card tricks, that way you can show something, get some experience and again that's fun to do.
Slip a deck of cards in the pocket, so you can practice when you have time, for example if you have to wait somewhere, train, bus you name it.

Look at a few effect you would like to learn and see what slights it uses.
Then practice makes perfect only practice that sleights where ever you can until you can do it the right way.
After that go back to that effect and put it all together.
If that's ok, you have a new trick, show it around and have fun with it.

When that goes ok, the fun factor will get you going to learn more.
Select a few tricks with some sleights and start the proces again.

Above all have fun with it.

Can you do a good french drop? starting from scratch is a good place.

Yes - 'french drop' a good one - also just palming a coin and pulling it out from someones ear, is a lot of fun. - just remember if people keeping saying - " Do A Trick - " over and over- Soooo, BARROW a coin - do a trick with it - then put it IN YOUR Pocket. They say -can I have my coin back? - YOU say - I help support my Family with Magic - Thank You for your contribution.

A huge AMEN to Balthasar. Key words he mentioned are hobby and fun. We are NOT all professional magicians, most of all myself. I have never performed magic professionally. I do not even call myself an amateur. At most, I am a hobbyist, and even at that, a casual hobbyist. I show tricks to people when appropriate and when I want to, not every open moment. I do not walk around with tricks in my pockets. I have tried to practice sleight of hand through the years since I was a kid, and I just do not have what it takes to perform sleight of hand smoothly and convincingly. Maybe my hands and fingers just are not suited for it. As a result, I stick to tricks that do all the work, and are as self working as possible.

There is a very large and popular online magic outlet that I have purchased my fair share of merchandise from. I always read the descriptions carefully when I see a trick I like. The descriptions are generally accurate when describing difficulty and necessary moves. However, I sometimes read customer reviews claiming the description was inaccurate and unfair, usually by people like me who lean toward the self-working tricks.

That is when the arguments start. Invariably, there is always someone who says something like, if you cannot do sleight of hand, you should not be performing magic. To me, that can be compared to someone telling a heavy person if they cannot lose 100 pounds, they should not be eating food. Maybe that comparison is a little extreme, but so is telling someone with no sleight of hand ability to get out of magic.

I do understand that self-working tricks usually require some kind of move to pull them off. I typically can manage those moves. I do not consider them sleight of hand.

If your average in golf is 37 over par, should you give up playing golf? If you bowl a 64 but enjoy bowling, should you give it up? Some reading this will say say yes to both. To them, I say you should give up magic, no matter how good your sleight of hand is, because you miss the whole point of practicing magic or anything else: if it is fun, do it to the best of your ability, and have fun in the process. Do not worry about opinions of other people.

Hey Syphon, I hope you got what you needed from all the great responses you got already. It looks like this post might have fizzled out, but I'll add a few thoughts just in case.

1). If you can join a local IBM or SAM club, definitely give it a try. There are so many generous magicians out there who will gladly help you learn faster and who can suggest great routines that you can do with what you already know. I'm also returning to magic later in life, and I've been blown away by community of magicians. People are so ready to help each other learn.

2). Consider joining one of the online learning communities if your budget will support it. I've joined Magic Mastery, the Netrix, and Dave Williamson's Sleight School and all have helped me a ton. The teaching is topnotch, well laid out to help me progress, and the community aspects make so many resources available. They aren't free, but I'm getting old. I need all the support I can get.

3). Practice hard, perform easy: this phrase means a few things to me, but I think the most relevant for this post is that it's OKAY--I would even say encouraged--to perform easy magic while you're in the process of learning harder magic. There a tons of great self working tricks in almost every genre of magic (ask the amazing Karl Fulves!), much of it can be learned in an hour or two. This means that you can be out there performing now, learning the kind of lessons that can only be learned by performing. Your audience doesn't care what sleights you know. Grab your favorite gimmicks and self workers and get out there and perform. Even if you just work in a coffee shop for an hour a week, I bet you'll be totally energized by the audience interaction. You'll probably also start to get a much better sense of what you want to study next. Your audiences will help you figure that out. Also, when you start to introduce tougher moves into your routines, you won't be nervous. You'll already have the confidence you need to be bold and blow them away.

Good luck and have fun! Andrew

Just learn 1 solid trick at a time, and you can build upon it, learn 2 learn 3, and at 3 or more tricks you have a little routine you can do for someone where you can link them all together.
3 back to back card tricks, 3 coin tricks, etc. just 1 foot in front of the other, take it a trick at a time.

enjoy!