Gaze upon the King of Clubs fondly. Your first chance to grab a rare, never-to-be-sold Gold Arcane deck awaits in our Arcane video contest.

In the coming weeks, we’ll announce how everyone will get a chance to snare one of the 5,000 of these decks that have been printed. But in the meantime, your skill and performance could put one of these in your hands.

In a nutshell: Surely, you’ve had your chance to get a few decks of Arcane playing cards. Now, we want to see what you do with them. Hit the mall, the boardwalk, the park, anywhere there are spectators, and blow some minds with either a black or white deck. Or use both. It’s your routine. Our judges will pick the best video based on creativity, skill, presentation and audience reaction. Here’s the rules:

• Only one video per person. If there is any appearance of multiple submissions from the same person, the videos will not be judged.
• Vid must be no longer than four minutes. Handy tip: TIME YOUR ROUTINE BEFORE PERFORMING.
• Your performance must be for at least one genuine spectator.
• Your performance may include any trick or effect that utilizes playing cards, and those cards must be from a deck of Arcanes.
• Creativity is encouraged. Use the glyphs or the smoky face cards as part of your routine.
• Your video may include any kind of editing, but your trick or routine must be uncut.
• Submit your videos in the Member Videos forum with the words “Arcane Contest” somewhere in the title.
• All videos must meet our submission guidelines. Any videos that do not will not be judged. NO EXCEPTIONS. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.
• If you have any questions about the rules, ask them in this thread on the Ellusionist Forums.

Submission deadline: 12:01 a.m. Monday, March 1 (Central time zone; GMT -6). Good luck!

Aaron Fisher, he of the incredibly smooth hands and Widespread Panic-listening ears, recently returned from a lecture tour across Spain. The highlight was watching a performance from the legend Juan Tamariz. The best part: Fisher was excited to see the performance, because it was going to be in Spanish.

How did it go? What happened? If you are racked with mystery over those last two questions, you really need to listen to the podcasts Fisher posted on his blog, which can be found on his Web site. Great stuff.

If you’re a shutterbug, you can take pictures of your favorite Ellusionist cards, clips, T-shirts or whatever, then post them up for the world to see (like Arvind did with that killer bridge pic). If you took a great shot of the Ghost Ace, post it! If one of your buddies caught you in the middle of an epic flourishing session with a deck of Arcanes, post it. If you took a great, artsy, black-and-white shot of the Ringtone gimmick, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE DO NOT POST IT. Keep your shots to things that you would have no problem showing a layman. Then follow the instructions on the product page for posting. We’ll take the best of the best and post them after a couple of days. Check out these pictures of the Ghost deck as an example.

If you have some great performance videos, we want to see those as well. Maybe you dropped some jaws with Serial Biller, or you performed an incredible XCM routine to a few spectators at the mall, and your buddy filmed the whole thing. If the vids are good enough, they will make it to the product pages, where all of our customers can see how much you rock. Check the Masters page for an example video.

In all cases, your video, picture or review won’t appear instantly. They will go through our queue and we’ll post the best of the best.

To recap: There are now four ways you can make your mark on each one of our product pages. You can write a review, record a live performance, publish a video review or submit your own pictures. Let’s see whatcha got!

The links below are the correct ones; if you were watching the previous auctions, you will need to clear those and use these links instead.

Everyone at Ellusionist appreciates your patience with this matter. We have been assured that it won’t happen again — Both Ellusionist and eBay want to make sure your generosity does not go to waste.

An opportunity to snag some of Ellusionist’s rare items will benefit the American Red Cross and help the people of Haiti recover from a devastating earthquake.

We’ve placed some of our more rare items up for bids in a special eBay fundraising auction. 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund. The items up for auction include five 1st ed. Black Ghost decks, three uncut sheets of the 1st ed. Black Ghost deck and the ultra-new, ultra-rare Red Arcane Porper Clip.

You already know how rare the Black Ghost decks are. Our supply of the run of 5,000 has dwindled over the years, so opportunities to snag them will decrease. The same goes for the uncut sheets: As rare as the decks are, the sheets are even more rare.

As for the red clips: There are only 50 in existence. They are exactly like the silver and gun-metal clips, only they come in a dark red color. They are every bit as durable and functional as any Porper Clip — they will keep your cards flat, crisp and ready to go. Also, even though the hole is cut to match the Arcane ace perfectly, the aces on other deck boxes aren’t too far off the mark. This auction will be the first chance that ANYONE has had to get one of the red clips.

You can find auctions for each of the items below. Your participation will go a long way toward helping Haitians recover and get back to normal lives.

• Red Arcane Porper Clip
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Uncut Sheet No. 1
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Uncut Sheet No. 2
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Uncut Sheet No. 3
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 1
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 2
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 3
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 4
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 5

So, what’s different? You can see Mitchell’s great video review, and others, smack dab in the middle of our product pages.

You can review anything you want and submit it. If it’s great, tell us. If it sucks, tell us. The only videos we’ll not publish are ones that don’t meet our quality standards. In other words, be fair and objective. Once you’re done, just follow the instructions at the bottom of the page. It will go through our submission queue and be posted in a few days. Easy peasy.

Oh, side note: If you haven’t subscribed to Mitchell’s YouTube channel, you should.

For those of you who had already bid, we realize that is a frustrating answer. Trust us, everyone behind the scenes at Ellusionist is frustrated about this situation. Without going into detail, we feel we were treated unprofessionally by the auction site. However, the auction is for an important reason, and we are going to see it through. Again, thanks for your patience, and we’ll let everyone know when the items are back up for auction.

UPDATE, 9 a.m. Feb. 2: We were informed this morning by eBay that the auctions have become too valuable for our account. The company pulled our auction items this morning. Our staff is working right now to get the items back up and running, with all bids restored. We will update this page with more information as we get it.

Thanks for your patience in this matter, guys. We are working hard to make sure your generosity doesn’t go to waste.

An opportunity to snag some of Ellusionist’s rare items will benefit the American Red Cross and help the people of Haiti recover from a devastating earthquake.

We’ve placed some of our more rare items up for bids in a special eBay fundraising auction. 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund. The items up for auction include five 1st ed. Black Ghost decks, three uncut sheets of the 1st ed. Black Ghost deck and the ultra-new, ultra-rare Red Arcane Porper Clip.

You already know how rare the Black Ghost decks are. Our supply of the run of 5,000 has dwindled over the years, so opportunities to snag them will decrease. The same goes for the uncut sheets: As rare as the decks are, the sheets are even more rare.

As for the red clips: There are only 50 in existence. They are exactly like the silver and gun-metal clips, only they come in a dark red color. They are every bit as durable and functional as any Porper Clip — they will keep your cards flat, crisp and ready to go. Also, even though the hole is cut to match the Arcane ace perfectly, the aces on other deck boxes aren’t too far off the mark. This auction will be the first chance that ANYONE has had to get one of the red clips.

You can find auctions for each of the items below. Your participation will go a long way toward helping Haitians recover and get back to normal lives.

• Red Arcane Porper Clip
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Uncut Sheet No. 1
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Uncut Sheet No. 2
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Uncut Sheet No. 3
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 1
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 2
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 3
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 4
• 1st Ed. Black Ghost Deck No. 5

His spree landed him $650 worth of merchandise from Ellusionist’s shelves. Because his Internet wasn’t very fast, we gave him an extra minute and threw a couple of bricks of cards in for him at the end. Congratulations!

The answer will no doubt serve as a reminder of something you know in your heart: What you think is jaw-dropping magical and what your spectators think is jaw-dropping magical may be completely different. As we continue to talk about what constitutes a hard hitting trick, we would be wise to keep that in mind.

Thanks, Justin. You rock. All of a sudden, we are quite suspicious that your pass is pretty freakin’ incredible.

The rest of us can keep the discussion going in this thread on the forums.

Lee Asher has been blowing minds all over the world. He recently returned from an incredible lecture tour in Japan, and has created some of the most dizzying, deceptive sleight of hand today. We’ll put it this way: Virtually every magician I have interviewed mentions his Diving Board Double as one of their favorite double lifts.

His skill comes from his research background. Asher has read a tremendous amount of magic literature, learned from it and written many of his own works. He talked to us about that very topic in this edition of The Next Level — he discusses what kind of books he likes to read, how he breaks down a book and why there is no such thing as a bad magic book.

Download

Keep an eye on this space over the weekend: I have some outtakes about Asher’s book collection and plans for 2010 that are too good to leave on the cutting room floor.

Sinful: A Graphic Novel goes a step beyond the Sinful you learned back in the day — the original coin through soda can that helped make Criss Angel legendary. Drawn by artist Josh Funk, the book re-imagines a performance of the effect at a fictional club, then goes into incredible detail to teach the effect — including new ideas, alternate moves and a rare look into the creative process. The book also comes with a DVD that features new performance footage and an interview between Wayne and legendary close-up magician Paul Harris.

Get your copy quickly. Sinful: A Graphic Novel is going to be a great addition to your library.