Difference between revisions of "Burton Sperber"

Revision as of 08:36, 3 October 2011

Burton "Burt" Sperber was a amateur mentalist and magic collector.

Sperber was inspired at a young age by his uncle Maury Leaf (a Hollywood magician who later became one of the first and most frequent performers at the Magic Castle). He started out specialized in escapes and then moved into mentalism.

By profession his was a landscape contractor, a business which he grew into a $1 billion in annual revenues as ValleyCrest Corporation.^[1]

Shortly after starting up ValleyCrest in 1949, Sperber went into the army and saw military service in Japan and Korea.

At the insistence of Uncle Maury, he applied for his membership at the Magic Castlein 1965 and became a frequent visitor.

Later in the 1960s, Sperber joined the Delta Group, an informal club of mentalists in Los Angeles. He later joined the Psychic Entertainers Association and contributed articles to Magick. He was also a contributing editor for the Sorcerer's Attic.

He was a renowned collector of magic books, catalogs, periodicals, automata, and ephemera.^[2]

His daughter, actress Wendie Jo Sperber, died in 2005 after losing her battle with cancer.^[3]

Bibliography

• Miracles of My Friends (1982)
• A Checklist of Conjuring Catalogs and their Dealers or Magic Shops in English from 1843-2006) (2007)
• Duke Tricks with Cards (2009)
• Miracles of My Friends II (2011)

• A Real Miracle series: The Wee Book II (1994)
• A Real Miracle series: Cartophily (1995)

References

1. ↑ How to Cultivating a Collection, MUM, September, 2008
2. ↑ http://www.geniimagazine.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=253639
3. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendie_Jo_Sperber