Magic Review - PET by Richard Pinner

A great closer with the right circumstances

One of my favourite closers during walkaround gigs is not an effect in itself, but a device that allows me to finish strong and it has the most peculiar name of P.E.T by Richard Pinner.

It allows me to finish a set with a bill or signed card appearing in a sealed Red Pocket envelope that’s been locked in a plastic envelope thing, hence P.E.T. I first came across this from Jon Van De Put’s (Piff the Magic Dragon) Penguin Live lecture where he taught all his old material now that he’s a world famous magic dragon. When I saw his routine using P.E.T I knew I had to get one and once I did, it became a staple of my walkaround repertoire.

Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the rest of this device and what it can do for a magician.

The Good

What this device essentially is, is a card to envelope wallet, without the wallet and uses envelopes which have properties that make it easy to setup and also make sense.

In fact when you go to the only place selling it, you get to see how the device works so you can make a very informed decision on whether to buy it or not! The effect primarily uses Chinese red pocket envelopes, which traditionally are given out during Lunar New Year or at birthday/weddings as a gift, containing money inside. As someone who is Chinese, it made all the sense in the world for me to pull this out at the end of my set and give it away as a gift, I get to share with others a piece of my culture and give them an impossible magic moment.

You get two cases, a clear one and a black one, but I never use the black one, opting to use the clear one as audiences get to see the red pocket before you take it out of the PET case, and the clearness helps when you reset the red pocket inbetween performances. I like to setup a bunch of envelopes beforehand and keep them in my top pocket, then reset as I make my way from one group to another. I always get great reactions with this effect, primarily because it perfectly encapsulates my set, with a signed card, bill and business card found inside.

I’ve done this effect at every gig for years and will continue to perform it as long as people carry cash, which brings me to..

The Bad

The primary negative with this effect doesn’t have to do with the device, routine or use of red pocket envelopes, but something affecting all of society - no one carries cash anymore!

There have been countless times I am performing and I ask for a bill (’note’ in Australia), and the response is usually in the negative. No one carries physical money these days, and the number of people who don’t carry a wallet at all increases over time, unless you’re a magician and you have multiple wallets, all carrying money that are for magic and not spending.

The rate in which I perform this effect has dropped over time, and will continue to drop, but I still have it setup just incase I get that elusive bill at a gig, I know I can perform this to great effect. Mind you, when I ask for a bill, it’s to do a different effect (Dan Harlan’s Travelling Cash), so in my set structure, if they don’t have a bill, I have different effects I’ll go into, but if they do have one, I proceed with Travelling Cash, Bill Switch to a gag coupon and then card tricks with a signed card and finally end with PET.

PET takes up one whole pocket, so for a trick that relies on people carrying cash, you have to decide whether it’s worth taking up a pocket or not. Sure, you can just do card to envelope instead but I prefer having a note appear in the red pocket too, although I could change out the envelopes to plain envelopes which is something Richard Pinner shows how you can do that.

If you do the version with a bill and then card, you’ll need to load the envelope twice, which can look suspicious when you go into a pocket for seemingly no reason. To combat this, I usually have a deck of cards in the same pocket as the PET, so when I load the note, I take out the cards in order to proceed to the next effect, and to your audience, they are less suspicious of you because you went to your pocket to get something, not to dispose of something.

The Rest

The reason red pocket envelopes are used is because they are made with a self adhesive glue already, so setting them up takes less time and doesn’t require glue or rubber cement. The downside is that you can’t display the envelope from all angles before you open it, but I found that this has never been an issue. The act of tearing the red pocket open shows to your audience that it was sealed to begin with, just make sure you keep the torn off part otherwise they might backtrack and work out what you did, which has happened to me in the past, much to my dismay, but was a good lesson in being clean.

Lots of red pockets end up being used, and while you can buy them from Richard Pinner, I also realised that you could buy them from any Chinese store that sells red pockets. The typical red pocket we give and receive are usually too big for the PET, so I have spent lots of time personally going from shop to shop in my local Chinatown comparing red pockets against my PET to see which ones would best fit, then buying a batch at a time. I still use glue to set them up, as it helps ensure its sealed better. My gig bag has a stack of red pockets and glue stick in case I need to setup more during a gig.

Besides money and cards, I found that you can also load other objects such as finger rings, so the problem above with people not carrying cash could be remedied with a borrowed ring instead, just be careful with the size of the ring and whether it has a stone as you could cut up the red pocket envelope if you don’t load it carefully. The plastic build of the device also means whatever you load, the PET would snap back into position without looking like it’s been stretched out to accommodate a thick ring.

Could this effect be accomplished with a wallet and envelope setup? It could, but I don’t think you could perform as many times at a gig compared to PET due to the ease of quickly resetting and a clean setup. I still carry a magic wallet for other effects, but PET just makes things so easy when it comes to delivering a strong finale.

Do you do any effects that end up in an envelope? If so, what do you have appear?