I need a good effect that will make spectators look at me and ask for magic. I am thinking about the Hummingbird card, but also think the raven looks great too. Help me decide!

Well what is your price range? if we don't know what your willing to spend than we don't know what to recomend to you.

I suggest you try things without gimmicks.
You can attract people by doing card stunts and flourishes if you're dealing with cards.
Since cards are never out of my arsenal, I do flourishes from the dvd Cradle To Grave by De'vo
or the simple stunt called Long Distance Spinner.
The Hummer Card is a good buy.
You might also want to try some manipulations, a couple of vanishes and appearances.
Harry Anderson's Needle Through Arm can attract large crowds.

I wouldn't get the raven as a way to attract people, as passer's by won't really be able to see what you are doing.
The Hummer, once practiced enough, looks great and does attract people. Heck, if you saw someone spinning a card around themselves, wouldn't you stop?
So if you wanted to get an effect like the Hummingbird, go with the Hummer Card as the Hummingbird Card is a reproduction of the Hummer.

Thanks. My price range is about 30$ down. I found a used raven for $10, but think the humming bird card is better. But, I hope to buy both!

It is not my intention to be rude, but please practice a lot before you try it out on people...

Such effects is a no!no! to mess up...

If you use the muscle pass for the coin falling up trick. That catches people's attention, and makes them do a double take.
Also if you do a trick that gets a big enough respons, such as a scream, people will rush over. (The Web, here then there, needle thru arm, etc.) If you want people's attention, I recomend Andrew Mayne's stuff ( http://www.weirdthings.com ). It really depends on your style. Flashy, surprising, fire, noise, and absurdly impossible looking tricks attract people.

Brian

A simple trick with cards that gets people going is the Rising Card Trick. Simple in mechanics but it gets good reactions.

Try Walsh's Long Distance Spinner. You can shoot cards way up in the air and catch them. It always seems to grab peoples' attention.

And if you check out this link, it's free! Can't get any cheaper than that!

http://www.geocities.com/mvvenrooij/cardshooting.html

Thanks! I am also considering a Black Tiger Deck. What do you think?

A Black Tiger Deck is good.
I also suggest getting the video of Apollo & Shoot Ogawa called
Cultural Xchange 2
it has very visual killer tricks that could attract an audience.

Don't GET A TIGER DECK
use everyday bikes or bees other wise people have the automatic out of fake deck, and you'll so learn that a deck will last you about two weeks or one spectator to drop it and it junk don't waste money on that crap use it for other things

Don't we spend enough time explaining that we're using regular decks? I swear it's one step forward, ten leaps back.

-Christian

None of this stuff is really "street performing", with the exception of some of the flourishes. And please, don't use a silly Hummer card, unless you want everyone to say "yeah, I bought one of those in Vegas, too!"
Cheers,
J.Warrens

Read some of the older threads in the busking forum. Your attention getter doesn't have to be a trick at all. Your goal at this point is to have people look at you. The way to get people to look at you is to have other people looking at you. Get a friend (or pay some teenager a dollar or two) to stand a few feet away from where you're set up and simply watch what you're doing.

Save your astonishing magic until you already have a crowd. Why waste it on the first few people and deny late-comers the pleasure of seeing it? If you're making them scream with an effect, then it's too good to be used as filler until the crowd grows. Try this. Get a small table (or a crate with a cloth over it, whatever) and a strange object, something eye catching like a psychodelically colored lota bowl.

Arrange that object on the table.
Set it down, step back and look, shift it a millimeter to one side, step back and look.
Rotate it a bit, step back and look.

Turn it upside-down, step back and look.
Give your watchers a grin and say, "I'm going to be doing some magic in just a minute."

Examine that object again, smooth out the cloth around it, step back and look, etc.

Have fun with it. You can enjoy watching your audience as much as they enjoy watching you.