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Telemental – (Click the name of the product to visit the product page)
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Another “mental mousetrap” from the fertile mind of Ray Piatt! ESP cards are used and openly displayed, studying them one at a time. A spectator commits one of the cards to memory. The cards are well mixed and held up with the backs showing to the spectator, one at a time. She is to concentrate on the symbol of her choice. As the cards are shown (backs to her), she is to say stop at anytime. When she does say stop, BOOM, it is exactly the one symbol that she has been concentrating on! Yes sir…that’s right! This is an excellent effect to perform from the stage with the spectator in the audience. Telemental is a different stage effect that will play well in the middle of your program!
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$87.50
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SM: So you don’t have a list of products?
Ray: What we used to do if somebody would call is send them a bunch of brochures and things like that. We’d send them out for free. Now if somebody calls, I tell them what I’m working on and I’ll explain it and they’ll say, wow, I gotta have that and they’ll order a few. They’ll send me a cashier’s check.
SM: What are you working on?
Ray: I was a member of the PEA for twenty years. We have a good clientele with the PEA members. There are about two hundred and fifty of them. A lot of them we met in person. The word is if you put out good stuff, the guys are pretty fussy about what they get.
SM: Describe the kind of wallet you make.
Ray: If we make anything. If it’s made of leather, and the spectator has to be able to handle it as if it was their own. There can’t be a window here and a secret pocket here and a zipper there… It has to look like you bought it in a leather accessory store. “Trick wallets” for tricks are exactly that. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for a Himber wallet, regardless of what you can do with it.
SM: I have one that I bought from Paul Diamond years ago. I only use it for gags, changing one thing for another.
Ray: It’s a magician’s wallet. Richard Himber didn’t invent it anyway. It was invented in Spain over a hundred years ago. The first one was made out of a certain kind of paper they had over there.
SM: I’d really like to become more familiar with your products. I’m wondering how you would suggest I do that.
Ray: Well, I could send you whatever we’re running. You could look through Joe’s catalog or access his website. If you do a search for, “Piatt” several items will come up there. Some of the stuff we might still make and some we might have in stock. We run out of a certain item and they say they need two-dozen, well; we do a run of that item but nothing less then a couple dozen.
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Centurian (The Magpad) (Large) – (Click the name of the product to visit the product page)
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From Ray & Lisa Piatt. The performer hands an ordinary yellow pad to a spectator and asks her to write a number, the name of a fruit, a pet’s name, color, etc. and then pass it to someone else to do likewise. All this is done while the performer turns his back. After several people have written on the pad, the performer takes it, studies the list and asks one spectator to concentrate on her written item. The performer concentrates too and then places a checkmark next to one of the items. As soon as the spectator calls out her item, the performer immediately turns the pad to the audience showing where he check marked the exact same item! This is repeated until only one-item remains. He circles it, tears off the sheet and hands it to the last spectator as a souvenir. This is so effective; it appears to be the “real thing” in pure psychic entertainment! Large is 8.5 x 11.75-inches. “Joe, this is the best mental “mouse trap” that Lisa and I have ever produced for the mentalist’s world.” –Ray Piatt “I told Ray that his “Magpad” might become, not only a real classic, but one of the best psychic items of this century. That’s why we changed its name to Centurian!'” –Joe Stevens
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$135.00
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SM: So Ray Piatt products are hard to get? Once you’ve got them hang on to them because they might not make any more?
Ray: What’s this online thing? I forget what they call it–Ebay. Now I’ve never been to Ebay. I don’t know how to get to Ebay, but a guy will Email me and say I saw an item of mine on Ebay and by the time he got to it, it was already sold. Some guys are really hanging on to my products.
SM: I guess some of your things are really collectible. Some guy’s buy every coin trick and book whether they do magic or not. They just love to own things. They buy everything that comes out.
Ray: There was a thing we produced in the late seventies called TFM, Transfermental, a fantastic piece; the late Jack London used it. Al Mann was supposed to show it on Johnny Carson when he moved to California. He went out there with Billy Dunninger, Joe Dunninger’s widow. They were going to do a show– nothing but magic. But Johnny wasn’t there and there was another guy-Gabe Kaplan, who did a show called Welcome Back Kotter… Gabe Kaplan didn’t want the magic and Al never did the show. So my piece never got on Carson. I told everybody to watch it.
SM: What’s the basic effect?
Ray: I came out with the very first one. It was called Transfemental. It was a clipboard. It was for stealing information. It was like nothing that had been done before. I could loan you one. You could get information right underneath their nose. Jack London got a hold of it and he did a hypnosis routine called Wide Awake Hypnosis. Bascom Jones did a routine with it called Mind Reading In Motion. I understand that Kreskin did it on Larry King. It was called Add A Number.
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Piatt Envelope – (Click the name of the product to visit the product page)
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This is one of the most devious and ordinary-looking props a magician and mentalist can use. These are standard-looking coin and invitation envelops. Just open the flap and dump out the correct prediction. No fumbling. No extra handling. Use for multiple outs, to switch a card or message. Complete with two specially manufactured and assembled envelopes plus photo-illustrated instructions.
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$18.50
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SM: That’s something I think our readers would like to know–if Kreskin ever used any thing of yours.
Ray: That one, yes. All I know is what I hear. I’ve never seen one of his shows. I used to tape him when he was on a lot of these different talk shows. He would get away with murder. But I never saw him do anything that I didn’t know what he was doing.
SM: One thing I saw Kreskin do on Carson was a card stab under a newspaper. He saw the card and then went to a person holding another deck. The reversed card in the deck matched the stabbed card. What was interesting was the marked deck was the clock type and the markings were so big you could see them from across the room on TV. You could see it from a mile away.
Ray: My own personal library I sold twenty years ago. The guy who bought it was a PEA member.
SM: What does PEA stand for?
Ray: Psychic Entertainers Association. I got so involved with them that they thought I was a member, but I wasn’t. They made me an honorary member and I stayed with them for about twenty years. They bypassed their strict intros and simply made me a member.
SM: Well, I’ve kept you for longer than I think you wanted and you’ve been more than generous with your time…
Ray: Well, you got me going. Same way with the keyboard, I type forever and I talk forever. Not all my products are hard-core mentalism. I do some fun items too. Certain kind of people you can’t do the hard mentalism. We have a bar downstairs and I do some entertaining. I’ll bring something out and Lisa will say, “oh not that again!”
SM: That’s the problem with wives-they’ve seen everything five times.
Ray: Yeah, that’s how it is.
SM: I’m interested to know who’s using your effects.
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