In this edition of The Subtle Sorcerer, we are pleased to bring you a very direct Card to Wallet effect that bears the Annemann touch! Don't let the fact that the card isn't signed put you off, the subtlety Annemann employs to convince the spectator that the card in the wallet is the same one he chose is pure genius. It's also an idea you may also be able to put to good use in other card effects.

What follows is Annemann's original description of the effect with just a few minor editions.

Annemann's Pocketbook Card
(Card to Wallet)

Many ways have been figured and produced of a selected card being found in a rubber banded pocketbook, each getting more complicated than the others, and generally losing sight of the very important fact that you can’t waste any time in opening up the pocketbook or metal plates without hurting the effect. It just doesn’t do, as far as professional work around the clubs is concerned.

After all, the only thing remembered by the onlookers is the fact that the card travels into the wallet from the deck. No one ever is deceived into thinking that it is anything but sleight-of-hand, so the only thing left is to do it fast and clean, getting it over as directly as possible.

My excuse for putting this on paper is that I’ve used it steadily, and there is no preparation or setting of things. Just the wallet in pocket. It has always been used as an incidental in a routine of table and close-up card effects; it will be just as startling to the people who don’t know it (more so because of the speed), and a puzzler to those who do know it because of the extra encircling of the pocketbook with the rubber band.

In a pocket easily accessible to the hand with which you do your palming, put a regular three fold wallet, inside of which is a two of spades or clubs, and around which is a rubber band running both ways. With a pin or knife point, put a nice rough scratch across one of the card's pips. It should look like an accidental dig (scratch).

In the deck you use, find the duplicate of this card and mark it in the same way. Now go ahead with your tricks. When ready, force the card and ask selector to look at it. Have it returned. Shuffle and bring it to the top of the deck. Now look at the spectator and ask him to name the card. And as you finish asking that, and he starts to answer, you palm off the card, reach into the pocket, leave the card behind, and come out with the pocketbook which you toss to the table as he names card. Hand him the deck which he looks through, saying card is not there. Then very openly open the pocketbook after removing the band, and reveal the card inside.

Without it ever being mentioned, the spectator will remember the dig mark. You fool a magician because, although he may know you palmed a card away, he thinks you put it in the pocketbook, but gives you credit for something new because the band goes around pocketbook both ways. And the person who doesn’t know the trick is just as much fooled as he would be with any other way. Why work hard when it isn’t necessary?

Afterthoughts
For those who prefer to eliminate the need for palming altogether, the selected (forced) card can be vanished from the deck by having it returned face down on top of a card with a bit of magician's wax on its back. The most direct way to accomplish this, is as follows. Force the card on the spectator. Give him time to really look at it and notice the scratch on his own. While he is doing this, apply a bit of wax from a fingernail to the back (near the center) of the top card of the deck held in the left hand. With the right hand, undercut (draw out from the bottom portion) about half the deck and allow the spectator to return his card on top of the remaining cards in the left hand (the top card of this half has the wax). Place cards in the right hand on top. In the course of squaring up the deck, squeeze the deck together to ensure the face of the force card clings to the back of the card with the wax underneath it. Turn the cards face up and deal them face up one at a time onto the table to show the selected card is gone. You can now reproduce the duplicate from the wallet, as described, or from just about anywhere else you like.