Barry's Guide to Magic Wallets (Yes, It's Just a Wallet. That's the Point.)

Eleven wallets, most of them holding a secret and none of them holding any money, because you spent it on wallets.

The magic wallet has a problem, and the problem is that it is a wallet. Magicians love them because a wallet is the most ordinary object a grown man carries. Audiences do not suspect them for the same reason. And then the magician buys six, carries three, and pulls a different one out of a different pocket at every stage of the routine until the audience starts to wonder whether he is a mind reader or a man who has been told by his accountant to keep receipts.

One wallet. That is the rule. Whatever you buy from this list, it should look like the thing you actually keep your cards in, and ideally it should be the thing you actually keep your cards in. The good ones are built for exactly that. The rest of this guide is about which job you want the one wallet to do, because there are really only six, and they are all quite different.

Peek wallets: for reading minds

A peek wallet lets you secretly see something the spectator wrote while it is apparently sealed away in your wallet. It is the mentalist's wallet and it is the category where the design matters most, because the spectator has just watched the paper go in and is now, for the first time in the evening, paying close attention to it.

The Peek Wallet (Jaks Style) by Secret Tannery

The Jaks peek dates back to a wallet sold in 1959, and mentalists have been using some version of it ever since, because it works and because nothing has come along to make it obsolete. The problem with most Jaks wallets was always that they looked like a mentalism prop. This one looks like a wallet. Soft black leather, blue stitching, room for up to twelve cards, and a peek that sits inside it doing its job quietly.

If you want one with a proper note compartment as well, the Hi-Jak Wallet by the same makers adds one, for twenty pounds more. Either way you are buying a method that has survived nearly seventy years of scrutiny, which is more than can be said for most of the people who invented it.

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Shelby Wallet by Gaz Lawrence and Mark Mason

A small leather credit card holder that gives you a peek at any word, number, symbol or picture. No electronics, no privacy glass, no lights, and no questions you have to ask. The principle behind it is clever enough that I spent a while being irritated nobody thought of it sooner, which is the highest compliment I give.

The sales copy opens with its author admitting he is no mentalist, which is honest, and then predicting you will love it, which is a mentalism effect in itself. Thirty eight ninety nine. A credit card holder is also the one wallet nobody under forty finds suspicious, because it is the only one they own.

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Castle Wallet by Simon Lipkin

A modern hard case card holder that lets you peek at a card and write directly onto a card while it is sitting inside the wallet, between the other cards, exactly where the spectator watched it go. Not removed, not isolated, not sneaked out for a look. Simon Lipkin spent nearly two years refining it with the manufacturer, and you can tell.

The write function is the reason to pay seventy five pounds rather than thirty nine. A peek tells you what they wrote. A peek plus a write lets you prove you knew, on a card that has not moved. If you do corporate work in a suit and want one object that does both halves of the job, this is it.

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The Greek Peek Wallet is also worth a look if you want something that is almost entirely self working. If you would rather hide the peek in an envelope or a card box than a wallet, Barry's guide to impression pads and peek devices covers the rest.

Card to wallet: for signed cards turning up where they should not

A card is chosen, signed and lost. You reach for your wallet, and the card is inside it. It is one of the strongest plots in card magic, and it is also the one with the highest drawer rate, by which I mean the number of card to wallet wallets that end up in a drawer after the owner discovers he has to palm a card into his jacket while everyone is looking at him. I have one. No card has ever arrived in it. The two below are the ones that fix that.

Hip Pocket Mullica Wallet by Tim Trono

Inside your wallet is another wallet. Inside that wallet is a zipped pocket. Inside that pocket is their signed card, and they can pull it out themselves. There is no palming, you do not need a sports jacket or deep pockets, and everything happens out in the open, which is exactly what the classic version could never manage.

The zipped pocket inside a wallet inside a wallet is overkill, and overkill is precisely what makes it land. Nobody can explain how a card got through a zip. Sixty three ninety nine. It is the best card to wallet wallet going and I say that as a man with a wallet in his drawer that proves the alternative.

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Real Man's Wallet by Steve Draun

A genuine leather wallet that is designed to be your actual wallet, with cash, cards and ID in it. The signed card appears sealed under the transparent ID window without you opening the wallet. It works with a borrowed deck, which is the detail that matters most, because the moment you say "can I borrow your cards" the audience relaxes completely and stops watching anything useful.

Thirty eight ninety nine for a wallet you would have to buy anyway is not bad value, and I resent the name only slightly. If you want the full history of the plot and every handling from sleight free to expert, the WGM Card to Wallet Set comes with its own wallet and a lot of homework.

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Switching wallets: for things changing

Z Fold Wallet (Locking) 2.0 by TCC

Show the window of the wallet empty and a signed card appears in it. Or a prediction changes from wrong to right. Or a card disappears from the wallet and turns up somewhere else. It locks automatically, it is built for poker sized cards and it does a surprising amount for seventeen pounds fifty.

It is artificial leather and it looks like a magic wallet if you stare at it, so do not make it your everyday carry and do not hand it round the table. As a first switching wallet to find out whether you like the plot, it is excellent value.

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Pro 4 Wallet by Gary James

Four different outs, all of which can seem to appear from the same compartment. Add envelopes and double faced cards and it becomes eight. That is the entire pitch for mentalists who need to cover a choice of several possible answers and want each of them to look like it was the only one ever in there.

There is also a tunnel system that connects one side to the other, and a Facebook group of people inventing new uses for it, which tells you both how flexible it is and what sort of person buys one. Fifty two ninety nine. Buy it if you have run out of ideas for the Z Fold.

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Flip Flap Wallet

A Himber style coin purse that switches, produces or steals whatever is inside it, a coin, a folded card, a prediction. It was designed to introduce coins while quietly stealing a shell or an extra coin, which makes it the natural partner for everything in Barry's guide to gimmicked coins, and it is just as useful for multiple outs.

Twenty four ninety nine. If you do coin magic you need somewhere to keep the coins that is not a sock, and this is somewhere that pays for itself.

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Everything else

Ali Bongo's Wallet (Black) by Astor

A note goes into the wallet and either changes into a different note or multiplies into several. Built on a method Ali Bongo would have approved of, which is to say simple, sound and slightly cheeky. It is not hard to learn, though you will want to practise enough that you do not look like you are fighting an especially stubborn purse.

People watch money more closely than they watch anything else you own, and the fact that it is their kind of object (a wallet, a note) is what makes it strong. If money magic is your thing, our best money magic tricks guide has the rest.

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Supreme Nest of Wallets by Nick Einhorn and Alan Wong

A borrowed ring or coin vanishes and reappears wrapped in cloth, inside a wallet, inside a wallet, inside a wallet. It is a closer. It has been a closer for decades. It will still be a closer when we are all dead, which is a comforting thought if you are the kind of person who finds comfort in wallets.

This version is butter soft leather straight out of the box, so no working it in for a month before it stops creaking. It is not an everyday carry and it should not try to be. It is the thing you bring out once, at the end, and then put away while they are still clapping.

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Zap Wallet by Panda Magic

You open your wallet and it bursts into flames. Then you close it and take out their card, or a note, or whatever you like. The Zap Wallet does this with a rechargeable electronic ignition rather than the old flint and fluid arrangement, which is more reliable and slightly less likely to cost you your eyebrows.

It is still a wallet that sets itself on fire, so do not keep your actual money in it and do not open it underneath a smoke detector in a hotel function room unless you enjoy meeting firemen. As an opener for a walk around set it is very hard to beat, because nobody has ever ignored a man whose wallet is on fire.

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So. Pick the one job you want your wallet to do. For mind reading, buy the Jaks style Peek Wallet or the Shelby. For card magic, buy the Hip Pocket Mullica. For a first go at wallet magic with nothing much riding on it, buy the Z Fold. And then carry one wallet, not six, because the second one out of the second pocket is the moment they stop believing the first.