Seriously, whoever took the time to do this is all kinds of awesome. Was it you, Lee?

A recent fundraising auction netted more than $8,000 to benefit a member of the Handlordz community afflicted with cancer. The auction included a bunch of rare items from Schattenreich’s and Jerry Cestkowski’s personal collection, including the knife used in a controversial video. The story behind the auction-winner of that knife, and what the winner decided to do with it, is pretty cool.

And speaking of the Arcanes: Wonder what 6,000 decks looks like before it heads to the mail? A lot like the picture below, featuring expert warehouse troopers John, Evelyn and Jeand’elle after our record-breaking first day of sales. They are the reason so many of you got your decks so quickly. And they are hacker-proof.

After almost 50 years, there’s not much in magic that Marc DeSouza HASN’T done. Outstanding close-up magician? Check. Worldwide respect? Got it. Awards from magic’s two largest international groups? He has a bunch. Creator of one of the most widely used sleights in magic today? Absolutely (along with Oscar Munoz, he is quick to point out).

Marc Desouza stopped by for an Artist Interview a few days ago. He talked about the era in magic’s history that is his favorite, what it takes to take your act to the stage (or in a magic competition), how he developed his ability to routine and his new 4-DVD set, “The Master Works of Conjuring.”

Download

If you somehow missed his video for the Arcane deck, see it here. Also, there is a discussion about a routine based on Alice in Wonderland. The video is below.

Part of the thrill of releasing the Arcane deck was to offer an Arcane version of one of the greatest, power-packed four-ace productions. If you haven’t seen his sweet performance clip in the Artist Gallery, stop what you’re doing right now, and check it out. It’s OK, we’ll wait. Go ahead.

But if you live in Japan, you can see Asher do it in real life. Lucky.

During the month of November, the creator of the Asher Twist and the Diving Board Double will be lecturing across Japan, talking about technique and presentation. Asher is one of the best in the business, and has a prolific library of solid sleights used by countless professionals. His plan for the Japan tour is simple: He will supply powerful information that will encourage you, inspire you and help take your magic to the next dimension.

Here’s where Asher will be when:

Nov. 11-17: Tokyo
Nov. 14: Yokohama and Tokyo
Nov. 18: Shizuoka
Nov. 19: Hamamatsu
Nov. 20: Kanazawa
Nov. 21: Nagoya and Osaka
Nov. 22: Okayama and Hiroshima
Nov. 23: Yamaguchi and Fukuoka

If you want to see him in one (or all) of the cities above, put in your request to Lee directly. He will send you the proper information on how to attend. He tells us that he WILL bring some Arcane decks from his personal collection to give away as prizes while in Japan. But the cards are the cake. From participants of Sorcerer’s Safari to professionals who have worked with him, Asher is one of the most inspirational and insightful lecturers and creators in the field.

Bring us back some sushi, Lee. Click after the jump for a map:

Lane C. Thompson won the uncut sheet, the lucky dog.

Winners of the free Arcane stainless steel clip are:

• Jack Champagne
• TJ Bourne
• Ian J. Throckmorton
• Mitchell D. Berger
• Anthony Nowak

And the winners of free black Arcane decks are:

• Philip E. McDonough
• Mathew J. Kenward
• Ronald Phifer
• Frank Spies
• Kevin Spohr
• Stephen Meli
• Nathan J. Parsons
• Aaron Kupferman
• Barton Snell
• Rick Gatt

A little perspective is in order:

• When Ellusionist first released the Black Tiger, the first edition of it sold out in four days. That print run was about 5,000.
• When Ellusionist released the Shadow Masters deck, we sold about 3,000 in a 12-hour period.

So, given everything that happened on release day, including enduring a DoS attack just minutes after the sales page went live, we were blown away when we saw that more than 6,000 decks of Arcane playing cards sold in a 12 hour period — roughly 2 a.m. to to 2 p.m. Central. This reaffirms everything we said about how awesome you are. Thanks for making this release a success!

Just because the decks are out doesn’t mean Arcane goodness stops. Keep checking the Arcane page for new performance videos from some top-notch card sharps. And check in tomorrow for the announcement of contest winners.

We poured five years of work into the Arcane deck. We teased it like crazy over the last few months across the Internet. We inspected it PERSONALLY as it came out of the presses at the U.S. Playing Card Co. We sent out decks to some of the best in the business for reviews and videos. We prepped our servers and secured enough bandwidth for 20 times our normal traffic (based on our last record-selling item) in anticipation for the demand.

And still, we got swamped. Definitely the Joker’s day today.

When the Arcane sales pages went live, we got hit with almost 50 times our normal traffic. Nine hours later, we were still hovering around 30 to 35 times. Some of our buds have joked with us and said, “Well, that sounds like a GOOD problem to have, right?” Ha ha, but not even close. It’s not like we made any money while the servers were down. We drummed up interest and demand to make sales, not create an unquenchable demand. We developed this deck to get it into your hands, so that you can drop some jaws.

We are humbled beyond belief that you gave us that kind of demand. And we’re ticked off that our site crashed on you. Our server techs worked like crazed beavers to get things back up and running. JBone and Dave never slept, they spent so much time working on this. And as of 3 a.m. Central time, we were back up, going at an average of 100 orders an hour. At 3 a.m.

Your loyalty and patience has humbled us more than anything. Like we said earlier, we invested a lot of time and money into making the Arcane deck the way it is, because we believed it was what you wanted. It humbles us all to know that this deck of cards created this unprecedented demand.

You could have bellyached, and raised cain on magic forums. You could have said “Eh, eff it. I’m going to bed.” You could have said, “Never mind, I’m buying something else with my money.” But you didn’t. You hung with us and kept pounding that “Add to Cart” button. We have the best customers in the magic business. We are thankful for you each day, but especially on days like today.

As indicated before, most of the server problems have been worked out, so you shouldn’t have any problems ordering Arcanes now. Knock on wood.

What, you want more reviews? We got ‘em. George posted this advance review over at The Magic Cafe. And our friends at .thecuso featured the below video, complete with stern, wagging fingers, card close-ups, sweet flourishes and awesome sound effects. And two middle thumbs, whatever that means:

In less than two days you’ll get your chance to get your very own Arcane decks. You’ll also get a chance to win several cool prizes, including a free deck, a stainless-steel card clip or an ultra-rare uncut sheet of the black Arcane deck. While you wait, you can pimp the desktop of your computer, notebook, netbook or smartphone with the Joker… she won’t mind.

We do not envy you right now, what with the Royal Mail on strike. First of all, it’s an incredibly detailed yet confusing schedule of strikes you have to deal with. No drivers one day, no carriers the next… yet none of those options help you pay your cell phone bill on time. It’s also a complicated, polarizing issue — mainly because the headlines and photos don’t seem to match.

We can only imagine how your lives are being affected. Seriously: We can joke about how it’s terrible that you might not get Arcanes at the same time as everyone else, but that’s shallow. You have bills to pay and checks to receive. This strike could cost you extra money and may even threaten your ability to care for you and yours.

With all the postal drama, we have some good news at Ellusionist: We offer shipping through UPS. We just checked a fake order of a brick of Shadow Masters to Buckingham Palace and found that our 1- to 3-day and 2- to 5-day options cost a little bit less than USPS Priority Mail. But the best part is that UPS delivers all the way to your doorstep: It does not rely on Royal Mail for any mail delivery. So, you can get your Arcanes on time, after all.

We have no opinions on what needs to be done regarding the strike. We only wish for a speedy, amicable resolution so that you don’t have to put up with this hassle anymore.

Sincerely,
Ellusionist