Growing up I always wanted to be a magician. I still find it all fascinating and play around with it. I can do a couple of simple card tricks well enough to appease my youngest neice and nephew and so last weekend I did just that. They had a deck of cards and I did a few magic tricks for them and they were just in awe. So with this positive feedback I’m going to begin pursuing it a bit more. I’m unfortunately on a tight budget so I can’t afford many gadgets or gizmos, but if anyone has links or book recommendations I’d greatly appreciate it.
If you can find a copy of Harry Lorayne’s The Magic Book I highly reccommend it for beginning magician’s. If you are interested in card magic, you may be able to find video’s in the “Easy to Master Card Miracles” series by Michael Ammar on Ebay. He also has several other videos in other fields, so you may just want to search on his name. Also, your local bookstore likely has some books on magic. I have found that even simple or “self-working” magic books will usually have at least a couple of things that I use frequently.
I know you said you can’t afford a lot of gadgets, but here is a great site for magic gadgets…
Magic Some of them are not too expensive and some you can download instructions for right away.
Magician here chiming in. I’ve been studying magic since 1992. For books I would recommend the following:[ul]
[li]“The Mark Wilson Course in Magic” by Mark Wilson - A great book that covers the basics of sleight of hand, misdirection, cards, coins, close-up and stage.[/li][li]“The Amateur Magician’s Handbook” by Henry Hay - Another good one for beginners that covers all the basic sleights and moves.[/li][li]“Now You See It, Now You Don’t” By Bill Tarr - This one has great illustrations and a good rating system of the different basic sleights.[/li][/ul]I have each of these in my library and refer to them often.
I also recommend signing up at The Magic Cafe bulletin board. You can find info on just about every aspect of the art of magic there plus there are lots of great magicians that post there to answer questions that your books and videos won’t be able to answer.
Other web sites you may be interested in are:
http://www.allmagic.com/ - Magic Show
http://www.mymagic.com/ - Meir Yedid Magic
If you are looking to buy magic (including books and instructional videos) here are some good reputable resources:
http://www.abbottmagic.com/ - Abbott’s Magic Company in Colon, MI
http://www.ellusionist.com/index.php - Ellusionist
http://www.llpub.com/ - L&L Publishing
http://www.murphysmagicsupplies.com/ - Murphy’s Magic
I woud also recommend looking for a club in your area. Magic clubs are a good way to learn new skills, finding good resources, and staying up on what is going on in the magic community. The two majormagic organizations in the US and the world are the International Brotherhood of magicians (http://www.magician.org/) and the Society of American Magicians (http://www.magicsam.com/). A membership in a local chapter of either of these organizations would be worth the money.
I hope this helps and I congratulate you on finding a wonderful hobby that I hope will stay with you throughout your life.
Thanks so much for the feedback guys! Especially Dragwyr. That info is awesome. I found the local IBM club and have contacted them about coming to their next meeting. More info and such is always welcome, I just wanted to say thanks so far!
Ronincyberpunk What kind of magician do you want to be? Are you the classic consummate showman in a tuxedo who performs seeming miracles? Are you a friendly confidence man ala Harry Anderson? Are you a rebel breaking the rules and letting the audience in on things like Penn and Teller? Are you some kind of clown?
I decided to study magic after my niece’s reaction when I pulled a Barbie out of a hat. Originally, it was just so I could amaze and astound her during my next vist. I’m generally broke. This rules out what I call ‘mechanical magic’, tricks requiring only specialized props and equipment. I’m clumsy and lack manual dexterity. This rules out sleight of hand. But, combined with the clown skills I already had, I could make it work. The children must say the magic words “Ala peanutbutter sandwiches!” with me. If I mess up the trick and it doesn’t work, I tell the kids to be louder and concentrate harder and try again. If an older child knows how a trick is done and can do it better than I can, I go into a shtick where I tearfully recall how I was thrown out of magic school. This draws attention away from my failure as a magician and back to my being silly (I excell in silliness). I am terrible at sleight of hand and require extra time and concealment for sleight of hand tricks. So, those tricks involve an extra step of rubbing objects on my butt, armpit, etc. If I tried to do a quick manipulation behind my back, I would be detected. If I switch marbles while vigourously rubbing the magic handkerchief on my buttocks and shouting “Abracabooty! Hocus Tuchas!”, the kids are thrilled and distracted.
No amount of money or training will enable me to pull of the classic tuxedo magician, the friendly con man, or the choreographed show of Copperfield. But as a clown, even when I can’t get a trick to work, or I drop the hidden ball, it works in my favor.
I also recommend the Fantasma magic line. I’ve found several of their boxed sets in dollar stores. Some of the included items are just optical illusions. Some of the items are too cheaply made to work (the dissapearing coin trick in the Money Magic set for example). Some of them are of good quality, and work great (the cup and ball, and the block and magic box of the Awesome Magic set, the pen through window trick of the Impossible Magic set). Each set comes with instructions not only on how to do the trick, but on variations that can be done using the same equipment.
You may also already own many things that make fine magic tricks. I have a horseshoe and rings puzzle. Once you figure out how to solve it, you can do it in about a second and without looking. But, to most people it looks like a magic trick. They look for hidden openings. After trying for a while to solve the puzzle, one friend insisted that it could not be done. He was sure that when I put my hands behind my back, I was not removing the ring but swapping the puzzle with a second pair of horseshoes and a second ring.
DocCathode makes a good point. There are many different types of magic to learn about. There are also many different ways that you can present magic to your audience. The key is to figure out what presentation and theme works for you. There are serious magicians that can spook the heeby-jeebies off of you and there are comedy magicians that will have you rolling on the floor.
However you decide to present your magic, you will still need to learn the basics of the art. As you practice those basic skills and discover new effects to perforn, you will find is that certain aspects of the art will appeal to you and other aspects won’t. It’s all part of learning the art. You will eventually find stuff that you like to perform that will have a big impact on your audience, that will also fit into your personal style of performing. That will be when you will start calling yourself a magician (as opposed to somone who is just studying magic).
Right now I’m focusing on card magic for the most part. I’ve got big hands so I’ve always had fun manipulating the deck like one handed cuts and such, so I’m just working on that. I don’t have any plans right now to take this into a part time profession though perhaps down the road I might. So right now I’ve not thought about it any further than that I’m interested in card magic. 
Some good resources for card magic:[ul]
[li]“Card College”, vols 1-5 by Roberto Giobbi, Considered to be the ultimate reference on Card magic[/li][li]“Royal Road to Card Magic” by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue, Recommended for beginners[/li][li]“Dai Vernons Inner Secrets of Card Magic” and “More Inner Secrets of Card Magic” by Lewis Ganson, Some real classics of magic can be found here[/li][li]“Daryl’s Encyclopedia of Card sleights” vols 1-8 (Videos) by Daryl, If you like learning from videos, this is highly recommended[/li][li]“The Art of Card Manipulation”, vols 1-3 (Videos) by Jeff McBride, Considered the best resource for learning card manipulations (like back palming, one handed cuts etc.)[/li][/ul]Feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk magic with someone.