Cards to Pocket

Cards to Pocket (aka Cards up Sleeve) is a classic plot in card magic where cards successively vanish from one hand, seemingly pass up the sleeve, to reappear one by one in the opposite pant pocket.

Believed to be first published in 1868 by Robert-Houdin and known in French as Cartes à la Manche.

It was a popular routine with Charles Bertram, Dai Vernon, Cliff Green and Doc Daley.

Herbert Brooks, from England, is said to be the one that popularized it in the USA. See ad in The Linking Ring, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1923, page 4.

Published Versions

• Les Cartes à la manche in Les Secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie, page 233 by Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (1868)
• "Traveling Cards" in The Expert at the Card Table, Erdnase (1902)
• "Cards Up The Sleeves" in The Art of Magic By T. Nelson Downs (1909)
• "The Cards Up the Sleeve" in Tarbell's Course In Magic, Vol. 4 (1927)
• No Palm Aces to Pocket in Amazing Isn't It?, page 9 by Ed Marlo (1941)
• "Dr. Jacob Daley's Cards Up The Sleeve" in Stars of Magic (1950)

Variations

• Travelers, where four selected cards vanish from the deck and end up in four different pockets.