Hip Shot Wallet Review
I was on a mission. To find the fire wallet that I saw demo'ed at an
Orlando magic shop. After much research on the Magic Cafe and magic retail web sites, I determined
that the fire wallet was most likely the Jardonnet wallet. After reading a lengthy forum thread on
fire accidents and liability, I decided to forego the "fire" part of the wallet for now. After
narrowing my choices to the best candidates AND to the wallets that were not back ordered, I
selected Anthony Miller's Hip Shot Wallet manufactured by Murphy's Magic Supply and purchased for
under $35 from Penguin's Magic.
Quantity of Prop
Anthony Miller's wallets seem
to have an excellent reputation on the magic forums for high quality and solid design. I was not
disappointed. The wallet is made of soft, fine, high-quality leather. This wallet is definitely
comparable in quality to any fine leather wallet in a department store. It has become my every day
wallet.
I will warn you it is a bit larger than I expected. It seems to fit in my Dockers
and Lee jean's pockets without sticking out; but just barely fits completely into the rear pocket.
Perhaps in a smaller jean style it might be tight.
Features
* There are slots
for at least 14 credit cards or a bunch of packet tricks!
* Large zippered bill compartment
* Small zippered compartment big enough for cards and coins
* Two loading mechanisms
Here's a look at the inside:
The documentation indicates that the larger
of the loading mechanism can handle a full deck of cards. That doesn't seem practical but it does
appear possible and I found some forum posts where magicians were doing full deck to wallet
routines. You can use a credit card as a guide into the smaller chamber (a very nice feature) and it
also comes with two large, black plastic guides.
The zippers certainly add to the mystery
of how the card got into the wallet.
I've been working on the card-to-wallet routine that
is supplied with the wallet. The routine is a climax sequence for an Ambitious Card Routine. I'm not
quite comfortable with the routine yet but it looks like a killer method of ending the ACR.
I am using it for Kenton Knepper's Kollasal Killer (KK) routine. KK is essentially an invisible
deck routine without the invisible deck. There are better wallets for this routine but I did make it
work with a little ingenuity. You can use any wallet for the KK effect but the size of the wallet
and the zippered compartments really make the KK effect strong.
I performed KK today in a
corporate leadership training session and it drew audible gasps. I set the wallet on the table, went
through the patter about predicting events and that I have a prediction in the wallet. I opened the
wallet to show a normal wallet. I ask a student to visualize ANY card. Showing empty hands and
without any hesitation, I picked up the wallet, unzipped a compartment and pulled out the predicted
card. Truly killer.
Documentation
There is no excuse for this crappy, pages
out-of-order photocopy. Why offer such a quality wallet and provide such a poor quality document?
Paper quality aside, the documentation describes an excellent routine for a no-palm
card-to-wallet. The suggested patter is excellent and the card handling is described in detail.
This is my first wallet review so I'm going to rate this a bit low to leave room for other
wallet reviews. The Hip Shot lost 1 point for poor quality documentation. Otherwise, this is an
outstanding quality prop that I hope will hold up for a couple years. I am kind of hard on wallets
so we'll see if it can hold up to my abuse!