Hello everyone, I have question. I currently have 'The Magic Book' by Harry Lorayne, 'The Royal Road to Card Magic', and the 'Expert at the card table' as well as 'the boy who cried magic' and a few others as well (that are mostly for beginners).
I would like to ask for an honest opinion if purchasing the 'Card College' series would be worthwhile or I should use my money on other tricks or books.
Much thanks.

I recommend Card College very much. Outstanding for people who like cardmagic.

I must be alone in not having been overly impressed with the Card College Series. I bought all five volumes when they were released 20+ years ago.

I personally find Roberto Giobbi's style of writing makes my eyes glaze over. I wasn't overly impressed with the illustrations either. To be brutally honest, I found the entire series really dull.

Just my opinion folks - don't shoot me for it!

However, if you enjoyed Harry Lorayne's brilliant 'The Magic Book', then I'd unreservedly recommend Harry's 'Close-up Card Magic' as your natural next step. It remains an absolute Classic of Card Magic - for a very good reason.

The bottom line is that you can spend your entire life learning a raft of pointless card sleights just for the sake of it - 95+% of which you'll never even use.

However, if you want to learn commercial, hard-hitting Card Magic, then you'll NEVER go wrong with anything written by Harry Lorayne.

I got more out of Michael Ammar's "Easy to Master Card Miracles" DVD series

This is an excellent Volume https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/107

There are several volumes, the above is volume 2 but I would look into Vol. 1 And 3 as well. ( and others )

Why? He performs the routines in front of a few spectators. Explains the moves and sleights in detail and much more.

What better way to learn sleights; In the context of a routine as well as the timing while interacting with the spectators.
Michael Ammar is such a good teacher. That's where my foundation of card magic originated.

Thanks for all the comments, I would also like to know that if I buy and learn all the sleights in card college, would I be very good at sleight of hand and would I be able to tackle any card routine?

Just do what & best you can - don't ruin life by worrying about "IT".

Card College vols. 1-5 is fantastic. I go back to it as reference material often. I would also recommend Giobbi's DVDs based on Card College vols 1-2. You should just realize that learning sleights without building a repertoire of tricks using them will result in you forgetting how to perform some sleights off the cuff. This also makes the series definitely worth having as references.

Absolutely not! I guarantee that consuming that set of books will NOT make you, or anyone else, very good at card magic. That doesn't mean the books are bad (on the contrary, they are good), it just means that you're taking the wrong approach. You really don't need to go away and learn every sleight to perfection, what you do need to do is learn a small repertoire of card tricks to perfection; that is how to do them and how to put them over. If the trick requires a particular sleight you learn the sleight by practising the trick until you've got it nailed. The sleights by themselves mean nothing, and if you don't use them you'll lose them because constant repetition normally necessary to keep them up to scratch.

Having said that I'm all in favour of reading as much as possible for background information and for knowing what to look for and where to find it when you do need it. So if you've got the cash and don't mind spending it go ahead because if you're serious about cards then these books will be very helpful, for reference and background knowledge.

When I was a whipper snapper these books did not exist because they hadn't been written then, nor indeed did the author exist as he hadn't been born either, but that didn't stop some magicians from becoming very good indeed with cards, they just had to find what they needed from a variety of sources rather than being spoon fed from one convenient set of tomes.

As to the second part of your question, which implies that the Card College series might have every sleight needed for every trick ever invented. Well of course it doesn't and couldn't, even Giobbi himself openly admits that they are not intended to be encyclopedias, all he can do is select what he thinks might be most useful to know and include that. For example there might be many hundreds of ways of forcing a card but Card College will only offer a very small sampling of these; and the same applies to all the other techniques in the books. If you need a 'special' sleight to perform a particular trick you must learn the sleight with the trick, it would be utter madness to try and learn all techniques that ever existed - it just couldn't be done.

Yes...what Topper2 said.

I would also like to know how in-depth Card College goes into the cull and other sleight of hand moves. I would also greatly appreciate if anyone knows how good the tricks in Card College are as well. Thanks!

Check out Roberto Giobbis web:

https://www.robertogiobbi.com/

I've got a decent collection of magic books myself, including 'The Magic Book' and 'Royal Road'. From my experience, if you're serious about card magic, 'Card College' is definitely worth it.

If you've got Royal Road, you don't NEED Card College.

Card College's illustrations are very nice, and the tricks are a little "modern", and there are definitely more sleights taught over the course of 5+ volumes...

But everything you need is in Royal Road.

I'd maybe get the first Card College Light (self working card tricks) and see where that takes you. You might find Giobbi's style really resonates with you and you want to invest in the whole set.

If not, you've got a great volume of self working tricks that are NOT covered in Royal Road!

I think Card College is better structured, and more readable than Royal Road.
BUT Royal Road costs about £5 or $5; whereas all 5 volumes of CC will set you back about £150/$150. That's a hell of a difference!

Not strictly correct, Royal Road has none of the newer sleights, for example those required for packet tricks such as Elmsley Count, Ascanio Spread, Flustration Move, Olram Sublety, Jordan and Hamman counts; one could go on and on. Of course there are other sources for these such as Mentzer's Counts, Cuts and Sublety which would nicely supplement Royal Road and make it more modern, but I agree that Royal Road will take you a long way. I also like Norman's Basic Card Technique which is of the same vintage as Royal Road and also has the advantage of being inexpensive.

Thank you very much for your comments and help. I think that since I cannot afford the books, I will wait until later (such as my birthday or Christmas) so that I can put it on my Wishlist. The main reason I was asking about this was because I wanted to see what others recommended. Thank you very much to everyone who commented!