What People Buy at L.A.'s Only Magic Store

LOS ANGELES IS HOME TO THE MAGIC CASTLE, the official clubhouse of the Academy of Magical Arts and a Hollywood destination for magic lovers for over 100 years. But just 10 minutes up the Cahuenga Pass you’ll find another magic institution — this one located on the second floor of a Studio City strip mall. And unlike The Magic Castle, there’s no dress code or need to hound an existing member for an invitation. 

Opened in 2003 by professional magician Brent Geris, The Magic Apple not only sells thousands of magic tricks, pranks, custom card decks, books, and all sorts of magic ephemera, it’s also a community hub with lessons, lectures, events, and meetings for professional, beginner, and hobbyist magicians.

While the affable Geris had several competitors when he opened, his brick-and-mortar has survived long enough to attain the title of Only Magic Shop in Los Angeles. It’s probably also the only store in L.A. where you can rent a box to perform the “Sawing A Woman In Half” illusion.

On a rainy but busy morning — a young boy and his father braved the storm to stock up on presents for the aspiring magician’s 10th birthday — Brent revealed the top five bestselling magic tricks at The Magic Apple, a disclosure that did not break the magician's code.

“People will go get a slice of pizza downstairs and they'll look up and go, “Magic? I like magic.” And then they'll come buy their first trick here,” Brent says.

“I have customers that started here when they're in kindergarten and now they're graduating college. And because we're close to The Magic Castle, sometimes magicians from out of town forgot something or broke something or didn't make it across with their luggage, so we supply them with some stuff too.”

5. WAVE’D OUT

Many of the tricks at The Magic Apple are created and designed by local magicians. And the fifth best-selling item was an $8 packet trick — a deck of cards with fewer than the usual 52 cards — designed by Brent himself.

"It’s my own creation, but it's based on methods that are from other tricks. It’s called Walk Around Magic. A lot of restaurant guys can do it. You put the cards back into the envelope, you go to the next table, you do it again.”

Wave’d Out is a relatively simple trick that’s perfect for beginners: Brent held a small manilla envelope containing four Queens and asked a spectator which one should disappear. When the Queen of Hearts was selected, Brent opened the envelope and removed four cards: A Queen of Spades, a Queen of Diamonds, a Queen of Clubs, and a blank card where the Queen of Hearts should’ve been.

Can magic tricks be copyrighted? "It's possible. But if you change one thing, that patent, that copyright, that trademark? It goes out the window,” Brent told us. “So it's definitely an honor system, an ethics thing.”

“I've been knocked off a few times, which is terrible, but there's really nothing you can do about it except cry about it and put him on blast.”

4. KISS MARRY KILL 

Next on the list was a $35 magic trick by Jeremiah Smith, based on the popular party game.

“It's a trick using Michael B. Jordan, John Krasinski, and Chris Hemsworth. The spectator decides who they're going to kiss, marry, and kill, and you have a prediction piece of paper that's been there the entire time that predicts exactly what the spectator is going to do. They can change their mind over and over. Great little trick.”

Like all the tricks at The Magic Apple, Kiss Marry Kill comes with instructions.

“We've got this sign,” Brent said, pointing at one of several giant signs in the shop that read IF YOU CAN READ THIS SIGN, YOU CAN READ INSTRUCTIONS. GO PRACTICE. “So many times people will come in and say, ‘If I buy Wave’d Out, you'll show me how it works, right?’ And I go, ‘Nope!’ If I taught everybody how the magic trick works, I'd never get any work done.”

3. COLOR VISION

Color Vision is a rudimentary mind reading trick made up of a colored die and a small plastic box.

“What’s so great about it is that there’s just three pieces. There’s no moving parts, there’s no digital, there’s no app. The spectator chooses any color they want and they put the color face up.”

Brent turned his back while a spectator chose a color, then successfully guessed it: yellow.

“There's high end versions of this. We sell a wooden one that's like 80 bucks. There are electronic versions of this, but this goes for $7.95.”

Digital tricks are making inroads in the magic world, and they aren’t always just variations of mechanical tricks; some newer tricks are solely designed for digital audiences. "There's some magic that only works on social media, which is a brand new thing. Some tricks literally don't work for a live audience because of the lighting or the angles. But on social media, they look incredible. But if you showed a human, they'll go, ‘Oh, that's not good.’ You can see the secret."

2. WONDER BUBBLES

The runner-up bestseller was Wonder Bubbles, a “bubble magic” trick that goes for $16.95.

“People always think magicians hide stuff in their sleeves,” Brent said while rolling up his sleeves. “Or that they have sneaky stuff in their hands. Nothing in my hands.” Brent then picked up a seemingly ordinary bottle and blew a flurry of bubbles into the air. While all eyes were on the bubbles, he turned one of the bubbles into a solid orb that he slammed down onto the table.

"Easy to do. Kids love it. If there's a kid's magician who's already doing bubble magic, they can pluck it right out of the air."

When pressed on whether “bubble magic” was its own genre of trick, he said, "Bubble art is. I don't know about bubble magic... but there's definitely bubble entertainers."

1. SVENGALI DECK

The bestselling magic trick, and overall bestselling item at The Magic Apple at $20, is one of the oldest tricks in magic: a trick deck known as a Svengali that helps magicians perform illusions that go beyond mere sleight of hand.

He demonstrated three different tricks in under a minute, successfully pulling cards and making them reappear exactly where he said they would be.

"You can do 100 tricks with this deck of cards. I'd sell this to a nine year old, I'd sell it to an adult professional magician. There’s so many cool things you can do with a Svengali deck. it looks and feels just like a regular deck of playing cards but there's a little secret in here that allows all those tricks to happen.”

BRENT’S FIRST TRICK

Brent also sells the first trick he ever learned: the Ball and Vase trick, a trick so old that some say you can trace its lineage to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, or Enlightenment-era France

"It's easily a hundred years old, at least,” Brent told us. “It's been done and redone. There's not even a credit on who created the thing."

Brent then proceeded to make a ball repeatedly appear and disappear from within a covered vase, while we tried in vain to figure out how he was pulling it off. “I learned this from my grandfather,” he said. “There's so many versions of it. I collect a few.”

“I've got a big brass one. There's a wooden one. There's collectors who have super big ones, very expensive ones or plastic ones like this.”