Hi all,

I noticed a lot of you are spending money on buying props. So here's a little word of advice.

Before shelling out your hard-earned money, do your homework! Find out more about the item you are about to buy. Do a search for the item on the Internet. Sometimes you will see the same item description but from a different manufacturer. If you happen to come across that, I suggest you pay very close attention (unless you have too much money).

Reason I am saying this is because there are a couple of cheap knock-offs on the market made by unscrupulous manufacturers out to make a quick buck. Usually the product is inferior, and doesn't function as well as it should.

Here's a personal experience. I once bought a nested brass coin box online made by Viking Manufacturers. Beautiful piece of work. Then one day I was down in Hollywood with a magician friend, and I dropped by this magic shop. And what did I see? Another nested brass coin box at the counter which almost looked about the same as the one I had, but by a different manufacturer.

So out of curiosity, I asked to see the product. On closer inspection, it really looked the same except with a different finish. That wasn't the problem though. Just as soon as I wanted to open the first box, the lid fell off. I thought maybe it wasn't closed properly to begin with. However, that was not actually the case. The lid simply didn't cap! And that was not the way it was supposed to function.

Fortunately, that happened in a walk-in shop. Now imagine if I had ordered that one online, I would have been stuck with a crappy prop. And it wasn't even cheap!

With that said, maybe we should open up another separate thread on Genuine or Knock-Off, and have buyers share their stories.