Fox Lake Playing Cards

During most of the 20th Century, most magicians were familiar with the promise of this box and its logo.  It could contain any of a variety of treats: a Svengali deck, marked cards, a stripper deck, a forcing pack, etc.   Indeed, at a time when a gaffed bicycle card was nearly (or even entirely) unheard of, Fox Lake produced almost every gimmicked deck available along with a wide range of packet tricks, like the famed Wild Card.

Where did these cards come from?  Here's some history from the Haines House of Cards website:

Asking Alexander about Alexander - Part II: The Results

As described in my last post, I decided to use these long-unidentified throwout cards to test the powers of Ask Alexander, a proprietary web site/search engine housing a vast database of magic publications.

Asking Alexander about Alexander - Part I: The Challenge

Who is this all-knowing powerhouse?   The image here, inspired by an iconic stone lithograph from the vaudeville-era mentalist Claude "Alexander" Conlin, is taken from the Ask Alexander site one of several fascinating services offered by the Conjuring Arts Research Center.  Ask Alexander is an elegant, proprietary search engine for a vast, and ever-growing collection of digitized magic periodicals, books and other publications. And, in this post, we're going to put Ask Alexander to the test ,,,