After Dan Harlan came out with his Card-Toon deck, a number of nifty "animated" decks followed. Most of them were very similar in method, just changing the animations on the backs of the cards. But Tim Spinosa took an entirely different approach (in terms of method) to create essentially the same effect as Card-Toon. He added more gimmickry to the deck, and made the handling pretty much "self-working". This was a nice "improvement" to Card-Toon which does require a bit of maneuvering after the card is chosen.
Here is what Spinosa's "The Animated Deck" looks like:
magi shows a deck of cards, spreading it from hand to hand, both backs and faces are clearly seen to be "normal". Magi riffles through the facedown cards, spectator calls stop and she is shown the card at the spot where she stopped the riffle. The deck is given a couple cuts and a drawing appears on the back of the top card. It is a magician in a circus tent. Then the deck is riffled and it is seen that each card has a drawing, which end up looking like a cartoon animation as the cards flip past. The cartoon magician (that's not you!) is seen to throw a deck of cards into the air, and then throw a dart toward the fluttering cards. The dart catches one card and impales it on a dartboard. The card is the 7C -- the selected card.
It may be overkill, but you can also now turn the deck faceup and show that every card is the 7C. (I tend to skip this part as I think it is an anti-climax to the neat animation effect. But it can be done if you like it.)
The Animated Deck has some advantages over Card-Toon:
no real moves or work, backs of cards are freely shown before the animation appears, it is much easier to perform.
It also has at least one disadvantage in that the card is not different every time, But you should not be repeating a trick like this for the same audience anyway. In my humble opinion, this disadvantage is far outweighed by the ease of handling that this deck gives over the original Card-Toon deck.
Brand new with printed instructions. Deck is poker sized, with Hoyle backs.
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