Aldo Columbini's charming DVD is a must-buy for any magician. Even if you don't like packet tricks there will be something here for you. My favourite tricks on this DVD are Ghost Flight, Prediction Gone Wild, Trifle, Red Blues and Klondyke Cato, and I would gladly pay $10 for each one. Aldo is a delightful man, and will make you laugh out loud, as well as giving clear instructions. The DVD is fairly low budget, but that just adds to the charm. I wish there were a six-star option.

NOTE: To do all the tricks you will need: Bicycle Blank Back Deck, Bicycle Blank Face Deck, Bicycle Double Blank Deck, and red and a blue Normal Bicycle decks. All of this can be purchased at Penguin, and are a ton of fun to play around with.

This may be the best $10 bucks I've ever spent - well, actually only $9.30 from Penguin Magic.

Degree of Difficulty

Easy to intermediate. Several of these tricks are almost self-working but quite a few require false counts and displays which are taught on the DVD.

Teaching

Very good. You'll need to know the Elmsley Count; a false count that appears to show four cards while hiding the face or back of one card. Colombini does teach the Elmsley count at the beginning of the DVD. Aldo does an adequate job teaching the Elmsley and you'll manage to learn it - however there are better places to learn the Elmsley Count. He starts out teaching the Elmsley with a 5 card packet counting into his right hand - probably not the most standard Elmsley you'll ever see. I'm guessing most intermediate card slingers already have a version of the Elmsley that they are comfortable with.

Aldo also teaches the Hamman Count, the Jordan Count and his Laughing Count (which is a cool alternative to the Hamman Count).

The teaching of the tricks are superb. He credits the creator of each routine.

Count 'em, 10 tricks! That's a buck a piece for some really strong magic.

The quality of these effects are really strong. Because many of the packet tricks are not gimmicked, you'll add at least a couple of these gems into you working repertoire.

Production Quality

It's a fairly low-budget affair as you might expect from a $10 DVD but the video quality is crisp and clear. The menu structure is very simple. For some reason, I can't skip ahead to the next track (trick). You have to go back to the menu to advance to the next trick. The audio quality is fine except that the goofy musical track that plays during the menu is three times as loud as the narration which is annoying when you have to go back to the menu to advance.

This DVD scores very high on value. At $10, you'll find some really good material to infuse into your walk around sets. The only down side is that you'll need to invest in some blanks and blank-backed cards in order to perform all of the effects on this DVD. I'm sure to order more from the Colombini $10 store in the future. Bravo Aldo!

It's priced right. There are a few really great effects here.

The pros: It's cheap. I've never seen most of these effects. There's one or two that anyone can perform immediately, no serious practice.

The cons: I don't have the mental capacity to memorize the handling of many of these tricks. Elmsley, flip, double, elmsley, don't flip, double, repeat 5 times..... One false move and you messed up a trick. Also, you're SO dirty after most of these tricks. I was expecting this, but I allow my spectators to handle my cards most of the time "Here, shuffle them..." These types of effects are out of character for my routines. I also always feel that using blank cards clues a spectator in to the fact that you own gaffed things. It's hard to tell someone that you use all regular cards, but then you bust out something that looks irregular and don't let them inspect or handle the cards.

I don't find the deliver nearly as comical or charming as the other reviewers, but please refer to them as to what types of cards you'll need to purchase in order to take advantage of these tricks. You will not feel ripped off with this set, just don't expect to use it all. There's moments I had difficulty with the accent.