Everything You Need to Know about Gaffing Cards with @Gaffguy52
September 14th, 2017
gaff guy, gaffs, magic, penguin magic, props, theory 11
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Jeremy Hanrahan is renowned in the magic community for his secret identity as @GaffGuy52. He started early and became completely obsessed. At first, he was a sleight of hand expert before he moved into gaffing. He started his career selling his gaff decks to Morrisey Magic in Toronto. Then, his decks quickly became hugely in demand. That lead to a 3000 deck order from Theory 11. He likes to think of himself as the Henry Ford of gaff manufacturing. That’s because he doesn’t just sit down and create one card – he’ll create a thousand in a regimented way. That means he can split a thousand cards in about three or four hours.
Jeremy’s early performance style was more confused than anything. But he eventually became better and better. The Invisible Deck is one of his favourite tricks, and he makes them FAST! He can create about 300 invisible decks in a single day, so trying to explain to people what he does for a living is difficult.
When he tries to people that he splits cards in order to insert a piece of steel he gets blank looks. He has settled on telling people that he is a “consultant”.
Jeremy finds that keeping the tricks secret is not that difficult. That said, he will talk about what he is working on with some fellow magicians. But he never asks them about the actual tricks they will be performing. That’s because he wants plausible deniability. Because of that, there is a close comradery among Jeremy and other gaffers.
According to Jeremy, there is no competition in the gaffing market place. It’s just a matter of finding people that can do what he does. He can count on his hand the number of people that can make the gaffs he does. But he really feels lucky to have stumbled into this business. It was a slow process. He had to figure out how to build the gaffs and then figure out how to make thousands of them at a time.
Jeremy is something like the Batman of the magic world. “Gaff Guy” is Jeremy’s secret identity. He has had people ask him if he knows Gaff Guy. Jeremy always says no.
He gets asked a lot by young magicians about how to create a gaff. He has a number of videos on his Instagram that illustrate the process. If you want to get good you will have to do it thousands of times. The question is whether you actually want to devote that much time to the process.
For me, buying them in bulk is much more worth my time. Considering there’s people like Jeremy who LOVE it!
Jeremy left a pretty good field of work to do this. If somebody had told him a few years ago that he would be doing this for a living he would have laughed. But after a health scare, his wife told him to pursue gaffing full time. The support of Penguin Magic and Theory 11 has been huge for him.
He’s seen his cards on many platforms, from the Tonight Show to America’s Got Talent. He gets a huge thrill from seeing his stuff used.
Of course, he’s not allowed to tell anybody.
What magician should we have on the podcast?
What do you want to tell other magicians?
Stop disrespecting people in forums and on social media. It’s a total waste of time.
What question do you have for our audience?
What type of gaffs would you like to see out there?
