Tbh I didn't read the entire thread but I'm just wondering if any of you have seen the Paul Fox Style Copper Cups & Balls that Zeneth Kok Productions came out with back in November and I was wondering if anyone's heard if they're any good? I'm planning on buying them because I have a set of these cups: http://www.penguinmagic.com/product.php?ID=742 the only problem is that those fake lemons can barely even fit into them and makes getting them in and out of the cups insanely hard to do so I was looking for some good cups that coud easily facilitate a large final load like a tennis ball because these one's come with mini tennis balls so a regular sized tennis ball would be a good way to keep true to Dai Vernon's last line which is, "I must use 4 balls." so if anyone has heard anything about those cups let me know because I'd definitely like to buy a set sometime.

Sincerely,

Matthew

There is a thread about the Zeneth Kok Cups:

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......m=115&25

Zenneth came out with these cups more than a year ago. He used ebay as a test market. The seller's name was Lezlie Cheung.

Well it looks like I'm going to need to spring the money for some of those Paul Fox Chick Cups from RNT 2 if I want something to hold a baseball sized final load, I'm just glad I have big hands, otherwise I'd never be able to hold my final loads in those huge cups, oh and I know I said tennis ball sized cups before but I'd rather use a baseball as a final load now and also a tennis ball and whatever other balls that would fit into the cup, any suggestions? If a big softball can get into them then I'd like to try that out sometime.

Five suggestions --

1) When you are looking at a thread about a specific subject, read the whole thread. I know it says "Magicians Helping Magicians" here, but at least read what is laid out for you.

2) Use the search function. Limit your search to the Ever so Sleightly section. Then if you don't find anything, try Secret Sessions and Tricks and Effects.

3) Avoid run-on sentences because if you write a very long sentence that really needs to be broken up into smaller sections it becomes very difficult to parse what you have written and make any sense of it especially if you have statments about this size ball, that size ball, and whatever other balls there are, any questions?

4) There are two different sizes of softballs. Not many cups currently available will handle them. There are also four different sizes of baseball. An 8.5" circumference baseball will fit into a cup that will handle a tennis ball. Check Dick's Sports to find them. Sometimes, RnT II has them as well.

5) Check out the cups and balls museum.

When I was a youngster and still at school I learnt how to do the Cups And Balls. It took me quite a while to master the slights and learn the whole routine that I'd found in a very useful text book that I still have today. Anyway when I had learnt the whole thing and it was ready for performance I showed everybody I knew at various opportunities only for them all to turn their noses up and say "Well the cups are obviously rigged". I insisted they weren't rigged and gave them out for examination only for them to insist they could see some sort of trap door in the top of the cups, a trap door that was never there but they insisted that the set of magicians cups I was using clearly had trap doors.

Now I'm a big girl I don't use sets of magicians cups at all I use normal ceramic tea mugs I bought from Tescos. Obviously they are weighted all wrong, are a bit heavy and don't really stack so well but I think there is a great advantage in using normal looking stuff that all the folks recognise as normal stuff and use themselves in their own homes.

Anyway I was watching some clips on YouTube a while back and noticed that Lance Burton was also using very similar Tea Mugs during a Cups And Balls Routine that he was doing in a show in Las Vegas in America. Do you think he had a similar schooling to me?

Could be. The idea that magicians' cups are gimmicked is, of course, not unheard of. However, it usually becomes vocalized more if the magician worries about it. Audiences pick up on any lack of confidence a magician might have and they turn it against the performer. I've mentioned this in the Secret Sessions (which you will be able to locate and access once you have 50 posts), in conjunction with something I use quite a bit. There is a coin routine in which a normal US penny changes into one that is as large as silver dollar. I used to get busted because the big penny had a different date from the small one. The more I worried about it, the more often I got caught. So I obtained a roll of pennies with the same date. This roll lasted me a couple of years. By the time I had run out of 1965 pennies, I had overcome the lack of confidence that had attracted the audiences attention. Basically, I didn't care what the audience thought about the pennies, because I was more concerned with making the work entertaining.

However, the use of teacups in the cups and balls is much more common than you might think. There was a fellow named Dr. Bell who was a rather popular dinner guest at Victorian dinner parties. He used the hostess's teacups for the trick.

If you knew the late Bob Read, you know that he normally borrowed everything he used when he performed the cups and balls at a function.

In fact, the routine that Vernon published in the Stars of Magic was performed with drinking glasses wrapped in newspaper. Teacups would have worked just as well.

It could be that Lance was caught by someone when he was in his formative years. Or it could be that he simply didn't want to use a set of "magician's cups." Some of our specialized cups look remarkably like punch cups -- such as the Sherwoods.

So, it's all a matter of personal taste.

A visit to the cups and balls museum would provide you with some insight into the various sets of "found" cups that people have used from time to time.

I just visited the Tesco web site and noticed that there are some really interesting cups there. The "Everyday" cups would probably stack pretty well, if you needed that for your routine. They remind be a bit of some of the mugs Starbucks sold for a while here.

As a matter of interest, what's the origin of the term "found" cups in the C&B context?

Fortasse

It's based upon Marcel Duchamp's concept of found art, without the context of "trash" art. I think I may be the first person to apply it to cups.