Thomas. The Magician.

This throw-out card is about as plain as you can get on the face of it. It doesn’t fool around, it gets right to the point. “Thomas. The Magician.” It does however have several things about it that make it a little extra special.  It says that Thomas is from Canton, PA and it states that “Entertainments Given at Reasonable Rates”. It further states “Illusions Skilled in the Mystic Art”.

What is really interesting is that the ad for Bicycle is different than the usual statement of “When you play with BICYCLE you hold GOOD PLAYING CARDS”. On this particular card it reads, "This is a sample of 'BICYCLE' Playing Cards. It pays to buy 'Bicycles' because they wear best, and are so satisfactory in appearance, finish and dealing and playing qualities. Sold by dealers every-where from Greenland to Australia."



Bicycle Motorcycle No. 2 Back.



 

 

 

  

On the reverse of the card is the Bicycle Motorcycle No. 2 back. This is the only throw-out card in my collection issued by Bicycle with this variant back. Bicycle issued this back design in 1914, so we know it cannot be earlier than that.

 

Trying to find out who this Thomas was has been a real interesting adventure! When trying to locate the name Thomas in my usual resources, I came up with too many people. I then tried the city Canton, PA and found just a couple of ads in different magic magazines in which Thomas was selling a few things. An ad in The Sphinx for December of 1910 said this.

  This still did not tell me more of his name, until I found one ad in Mahatma for July of 1901.

Now I had some initials, but nothing more. The magic resources were now at an end. So I went to Find A Grave and looked up D. H. Thomas for Canton, PA. I found a listing for a Delos H. Thomas buried in Canton, but was he our magician? I did find out that Delos Thomas was a veteran of World War I, as there was a marker for this next to his gravestone. Besides his name, there are just the dates 1883-1955.
 

I then thought I would look him up on the resource I have for newspapers for up-state New York. I figured it was worth a shot. As it turns out, Canton, PA is not that far from Elmira, NY and I found 37 references for a Delos H. Thomas in the Elmira newspapers. There was a Canton column that was like a society column relating the latest news of the citizens of Canton. We were able to read that Delos went to a banquet with a friend. Another time he spent a day “fishing for pickerel on Towanda Creek”. In 1916 it was mentioned that Delos and a group of people “were motor visitors to Troy on Sunday”.

Elsewhere, in the 1907 Bradford County Pennsylvania Directory for the Canton Borough, it said that Thomas was working as a clerk. Delos Thomas’s obituary was found in the Elmira NY Star Gazette for March 7, 1955.

 

Well, was Delos Thomas a magician? Was he the subject of this post? At the bottom of the references to Thomas on the database I was looking at, I found this in the Elmira NY Morning Telegram for June 4, 1905.

 

Then on May 8, 1914, this appeared in the Star Gazette in Elmira.

 

Trying Ask Alexander one more time, I was able to find this one entry in Mahatma for March of 1903.

There we have it. It took a lot of sleuthing but I was finally able to confirm that Delos H. Thomas was the one time amateur magician who produced the above throw-out card with the really cool Bicycle back. Maybe more will turn up on Mr. Thomas in the future. Maybe too, there are more Motorcycle No. 2 cards out there!