It’s time to stock up.

Look, you know how many decks of Black Tigers you go through — especially you flourishers. Even though they are built to handle the abuse, they perform so well that you still burn through your share. We know we do — you should see the decks we torture during our downtime.

The cards that started the recent craze of custom playing cards are half-price until 12:01 a.m. Wednesday (Eastern time). They are basically BOGO for the next few hours. We don’t know what “BOGO means, but our wives and girlfriends say that it is a good thing.

You know the story: These cards started the recent craze of custom playing cards. Ever since we showed these to the U.S. Playing Card Co., the company has churned out their own fashion decks, and countless other companies have tried to imitate it. There’s nothing like the original, though. Stock up today. Or tomorrow. Because that’s how long the sale lasts.

In our Gold Arcane Contest, competitors were asked to submit a video of themselves performing for an audience with either a black or white deck of Arcane playing cards. They were judged on their originality, proficiency, utilization of the deck’s design elements into their presentation, performance and audience reaction.

A.k.a. Brandon Porterfield, the Okinawa, Japan-based magician performed for a class of Japanese students who are still learning English. Porterfield had a perfect mix of interesting presentation, technical difficulty and KILLER performance that had us loving this video from the first time we saw it.

Our judges were also taken with the performances by Joe G (great interaction and presentation), Ninja G (outstanding skills) and Clement (powerful creativity). But Mallow81 had the best combination of all of the above, and put the priority on the performance. And we’re always going to value performance over other aspects.

For his entry: Mallow81 will be receiving our new Gold Arcane deck. Our only print run of this deck is at the U.S. Playing Card Company, running through its new Goss printing press, right now. Like the 1st ed. Black Ghost deck, it will be available only as a contest prize or promotional item. It will not be for sale.

Congratulations to Mallow, to the finalists, and all 47 competitors. We saw some great live performances! We hope it encourages you to get out there and drop some jaws of your own.

James Clark has sued Paypal for mismanagement of his account. He said the company is holding both business funds and donations to him, collected via PayPal. According to a small claim affidavit posted on his Facebook page, he alleges the company refuses to release funds in the account. He is suing for $1,500 in order to recover money for business and in support of his trip to Haiti.

Clark, who is trained as a medic and spent 19 years with the U.S. Army, in January asked for donations to fund his mission. He returned about a month ago with pictures and video of the things he and his crew encountered, and is currently planning a second trip.

An interview request has been sent to PayPal, Inc. for comment. The company is based in San Jose, Calif.

Warning: This teaser features some outrageous French accents.

The Real Secrets of David Stone hits our virtual shelves on March 22. Be ready…

The Gold Arcane is closer to someone’s hands, and you get a say who should win it.

Last night we posted the 10 finalists in our Arcane video contest, and it’s an incredibly talented pool of competitors. Some show a single trick with brilliant presentation. Others unleash a flurry of jaw-dropping moves.

Check out all the videos for yourself, then give your opinion about who performed the best. Our judges aren’t counting votes, per se, but they’ll be swayed by what you have to say.

Reviews are coming in for Ellusionist’s Invisible Deck app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and they look pretty good:

• “Ellusionist is always thinking outside the box. This is a clever app bringing magic and technology together. Great work!” ~Doug Freeman
• “I just downloaded this app 10 minutes ago and have already performed this for my wife. I can already see how handy this will be when I don’t have a physical invisible deck with me. The routine possibilities are just flowing through my head right now. Great App! Great Price!” ~Adrian Argueta
• “Wow! Ellusionist have done it again this time on the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad… What an awesome trick this is. It’s easy to learn´and it amazes people! I’ve used this trick alot of times… it works both for street magic and stage magic.” ~Peter Gram
• “Finally something good with cards for the iPhone.” ~Shawn Mullins

There are a slew of magic apps out there. What separates Ellusionist’s Invisible Deck from the crowd is how the method and design eliminates all those pesky “technological explanations.” Your spectators will watch the magic happen in their hands. Brad Christian and Jason Brumbalow spent months designing and testing, in order to ensure that this app felt exactly like an invisible deck performance.

You know that the ol’ ID is Plan B for us magicians. It’s one of the few magic tricks that is strong, hard-hitting and near foolproof. Download the Invisible Deck today, try it out on your spectators tonight, then post your own review. Let us know how it works for you.

Atik was mystified why a pink-tied magician would be performing at Ivanka Trump’s launch party Monday night for her fine jewelry collection. She seemed bothered by his knack for showing up in a lot of the party pictures (taken by Sonny Norton of Guest of a Guest) with a fan of cards in hand. The only good part about him, Atik said: At least he’s not an electric violinist. Apparently, those — like the phrase “for the win,” LOLcats and flourishing videos with the performer’s crotch in the background — are played out.

We looked at the party pics, and it looks like he’s killing it. Because we have a background in photojournalism, we can easily see why the photog would take pictures of him, instead of stuffy socialites drinking drinks more expensive than our card collections.

So who is this magician? Know him? We want to give him some props for workin’ it.

But here’s the real question: In what shape is your collection?

In addition to being a great sleight of hand artist and a card star, Lee Asher is a member of 52 Plus Joker, a group dedicated to the collection of playing cards. He recently interviewed Tom and Judy Dawson, authors of the Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards. The two talked at length about some of the basic grades for a deck and how to evaluate what grade a deck is.

The interview is over in Asher’s Playground. Check it.

Arvind Jayashankar, one of our outstanding forum Moderators and a long-time forum member, was recently featured on an episode of “The Next Uri Gellar.” Click here, then fast forward to 21:10.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it past that round, but he said he is thrilled he got that far. Well done, AJ!