Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones
Other than incorrectly crediting the effect Terra Unfirma to Richard Sanders rather than Jay Sankey, this product is pretty darn solid. What you get for $30 bucks is a lot of bang for your buck. You get a full deck of cards with a hole punched through the entire deck. You get the actual holes that were punched out, and you get an extremely well produced (duh - it's Kozmo Magic) DVD that teaches you (in depth) three effects you can do with this deck.
The title effect (W)hole Deck is kind of Sankey's Terra Unfirma meets Sankey's Forgery. A fake hole stuck on a playing card becomes real (Terra Unfirma) in The MOST visual way you can imagine. Then the hole jumps off of the single card and on to the deck in a Forgery-esque flare. The beauty of this (over Forgery is that you're moving a hole (rather than an "X" drawn on the card) and the hole goes all the way through the entire deck (rather than just on the back of another card).
The illusion is perfect and clear and powerful, and will get great reactions. As a finale to this effect, you can also reproduce the punched out holes from the card box . . . I say don't bother, but it is an option available to your.
With Hollow (W)hole you use the deck in a different way. Essentially, it's a penetration effect. The deck is secured with a ribbon through the hole. It's tied and the deck really cannot be removed. Then a card is selected and you magically remove it from the ribbon. The effect is good and has a nice visual element with the ribbon and the balloons . . . (What balloons? You ask. I'll get back to that in a minute).
However, there is a relatively big flaw in this effect. Before the effect starts, the deck is totally examinable. This is a good thing, but once the card is magically removed, the deck is no longer examinable. Further, though the balloon looks pretty, it is just kind of used with no context.
It helps facilitate a secret move and gives cover to another secret "thing" that's happening, but due to the structure of the effect, it shouts "duplicate" card which would lead the spectators to want to see the deck . . . ooopsie . . .
So is the effect that the card penetrated the ribbon? If it is, you'd better be able to show that it's not on the ribbon anymore - you can't. Is the effect that the card appeared in the balloon? The why bother with the ribbon? Using the technique that Marc Arthur used, he could have done the effect without the ribbon, and it could have been done with a signed card. So I'm not sure what this effect really brings to the table.
The final effect, (Ch)Angel has some (uncredited) similarities to a Mike Skutt effect. The basic effect is that the angel on the back of a blue card changes places with an angel from a red card. The color of the angel and the value of the other side of the angel change. The effect is visual and very clear. However, the ad copy claims that the card is signed. It is not. In fact, signing it would completely change the handling and presentation taught on the DVD. Not only that, but having it signed is too risky in my opinion. So we have a case of misleading ad copy here.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line on this is that just the main effect and the deck of cards for $30 is a solid deal for sure. A small hit for inaccurate ad copy and an effect that's got some structural issues and you're still left with a solid product, especially at the asking price.
Final Verdict:
4 Stars with a Stone Status of GEM.