You can lock your phone. You can lock your car. You can lock your door. Now you can lock the deck of cards you perform with. A deck of cards that has been shuffled and cut suddenly has four steel bolts appear running right through the deck so that it’s completely locked up. This is Lockdown by Roddy McGhie.

Here’s what happens:

The magician displays a deck of cards that they use to keep track of all of their personal information. The cards have phone numbers, wifi codes, and notes written on them. One of the cards is selected and placed face down on the table. That’s when the magician introduces the Card Lock 2000. A card with an arrow drawn on it is introduced and examined by the spectator. Suddenly the arrow starts moving around as though it has a mind of its own. The magician pulls a business card out of an envelope with a four-digit code on the back of it. The magician enters the code into the Card Lock 2000 with the moving arrow and then asks the audience to cup their hands together and that’s when the magician drops the deck into their hands to reveal the deck is now completely bolted together. As a kicker, the magician turns over the business card and a prediction on the back matches the card chosen by the spectator. In the end, everything is examinable.

Deck transformations always get huge reactions from audiences. Your audience will never see the bolted deck coming. Like all of Roddy’s effects, the trick is not only easy to do, but the routine is incredibly fun to perform. You will receive the locked deck gimmick, the Card Lock 2000 moving arrow card, and a blank deck so that you can use Roddy’s jokes, or customize the routine as you see fit. Roddy also includes a bonus routine where a selected card is extracted from the locked deck like magic. Put your deck into Lockdown by Roddy McGhie.