Cards to Pocket

Cards to Pocket or 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.

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)

Travelers

Travelers is a version of Cards to Pockets where four selected cards vanish from the deck and end up in four different pockets. Developed by Dai Vernon and first published by him as The Travelers in Stars of Magic, Ser. 6, No. 3 (1950).

Variations

• Ambidextrous Travellers by Larry Jennings - Four cards magically travel to four different pockets twice in The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings written by Mike Maxwell (1986)
• I'd Give My Right Arm to be Ambidextrous by Marc DeSouza, variation of Larry Jennings' Ambidextrous Travellers first published in DeSouza's DeCeptions (Camirand Academy of Magic, 2001).