– Intro / Brief Overview
What’s up everybody and welcome to Magic For Beginners, my name is Keith and in today’s video we’re looking at the absolute star of the Blackpool 2026 convention. It’s called Captivate by Christian Grace and Wang Zhe. This is high-impact, physical card magic where a signed card appears inside your hat.
Christian is known for “impossible” magic, and Captivate is his take on the Card to Hat plot. It was sold out this year at Blackpool and I actually got the very last copy of the trick, as he held one for some one and they didn’t come back and as I wanted it anyway, it was fate that I’d make it a sell out for him. This uses a precision-engineered gimmick designed by Wang Zhe that does the heavy lifting for you and makes it a simply impossible trick to perform for people.
– What Is The Routine/Trick?
So what is the routine or trick? You can of course use this and do many different ways for the trick but as a basic premise, you get the spectator to select a card and then sign it. The card is then lost into the deck and you say that it vanishes from the deck. You then remove your cap and show that the inside is empty and you then shake your hat and a card appears. You then reach into the cap and pull out the spectators signed card from your cap.
– How Much Does It Cost?
Let’s talk about costings for this trick and I paid £40 to Christian at Blackpool for mine and you can also pre-order this on Enigma Of The Mind on pre-order for the same price too and you can also buy a backer or a facer, so depends on what you need for your style of magic.
– Quick Performance
On the YouTube channel there’s a single video showing Christian performing this at Blackpool Magic Convention 2026 and it’s also in the main video for performances too, so you can check those out, but here’s a quick performance in this video.
– What Do You Get With It?
Let’s talk about what you get with this effect. When you buy this, it’ll come in an envelope style presentation package which has the Captivate logo on the front, as you can see on the thumbnail. Inside of there, you get an expertly crafted gimmick and some other parts which you use for the effect and have it installed into a baseball cap. There’s an option now for a face card or a back card which I think at Blackpool was just a back card available, as I think for my magic shooting and styles, the face would open up more options for me, but the back is also good. The gimmick and parts come in a nice thick and durable plastic case too, so you can carry around your gimmick when not in use to enable it to not be broke.
There’s also just over 51 minutes worth of instructions from Christian too for the full instructions version.
– Is It Easy To Perform and where can you perform it?
Let’s talk about the ease of performing and where you can perform it too. There’s two versions of this you can perform which is one that requires you to palm a card and another version where you don’t have to palm a card, so this opens it up to more people being able to perform it. Or the other way around this trick is by having a face gimmick instead of the back, then you only need to have the spectator pick a card and then the card appears in the cap as easy as that and can be done by a beginner no bother, but the back version may need some extra skills and the no palm version could be done by some one who can hold a deck of cards and do beginner sleights and of course if you can palm a card, then this would be easy to do too, but as a beginner magician, you may need some extra time honing some skills to perform this effectively.
Of course with this, it is angle specific in terms of height as you show the cap empty, give it a shake and them it appears, so you need to ensure that the side of the cap is above the eye line of the spectator, so some audience management may be needed, but could be performed anywhere you’re allowed to wear a cap or hat.
– Can You Inspect It?
Can you inspect it? The spectators signed card can definitely be inspected because it’s just a normal signed playing card that a spectator has selected and signed, however the gimmick that appears in the cap cannot be examined. But performing this trick correctly means that you just put the cap back on after you hand out the card and people won’t think anything of it.
– Is It Well Made?
Is it well made? I think so, yeah. Of course with gimmicks like this, you could easily break them if they’re handled incorrectly, or stored incorrectly, but I think it’s well made and should last a long time when used. It’s a low profile card and can easily be stored in a close up bag when not being used so can be kept safe and secure.
– Positives
Let’s talk about positives and I love that there’s two options available for the gimmick and while I touched on the facer gimmick would be my preferred gimmick had that been available to me at Blackpool, I believe there’s a extra element of surprise that I believe Scott at EverythingMagicPro covered in that when you have the card appear in the cap, there’s a moment of wonder how it appeared there and then another moment of wonder of them thinking “Is that my card” and then of course, you reach in and pluck out their signed card and it’s just so magical, so I suppose either of the gimmicks work well and are magical, but again it just depends on your performance style and way you perform or who/where you perform. But being said, if you perform mainly social media magic like me then it’s fantastic and if you perform for people too, then it’s also fantastic.
– Negatives
Onto negatives and while this isn’t a sort of negative for me, it could end up being one for some one who hasn’t watched the tutorial because Christian goes over how to handle and operate the gimmick and if you don’t watch this and just grab the gimmick and handle it wrong, you’ll break it and you can’t fix it when it’s broken and and it’ll be a waste of money, so that’s a negative as such, but just watch the tutorial and you’ll be fine.
If you can’t palm, you can’t perform the effect like Christian had been showing and you’d need to do some work on that which could be a negative for some again, especially if you’re scared about palming, but there’s nothing to be scared about at all and just takes practice. This isn’t a negative about the effect of course and it’s specific magician aimed.
If you have any questions or queries about the effect and need to know something, then feel free to drop a comment and I’ll do my best to answer this for you. For me, this was one of my top tricks from Blackpool 2026 and I’m glad that I managed to get my hands on one to have a play around with and just like all of Christian’s work, it’s just a fantastic idea and overall routine I think.
If there’s anything else that you want featured on the channel, then drop a comment on this video too and I’ll try my best to get it featured on the channel.
If you want to see more reviews like this, then check out some of the other videos on the screen, but until next time, see ya!