Magician Jay Sankey
Core Contributions & Career
- Consulting for the Greats: Sankey has served as a creative consultant for industry icons, including David Copperfield, David Blaine, and Criss Angel. He has also consulted on television series like American Gods.
- Magic Education: Through his company Sankey Magic, his 3-volume compilation The Definitive Sankey, and his massively popular
SankeyMagic YouTube Channel, he has taught beginner and advanced sleight of hand to hundreds of thousands of students.
- Performance Style: His background in stand-up comedy infuses his magic with high-energy humor and psychological misdirection. He famously engineered a stunt that seemingly made the Toronto CN Tower vanish
Jay Sankey Inventions & Sleights
- Paperclipped: A legendary card-to-impossible-location effect where a signed card appears folded inside a paperclip that has been in full view from the start.
- Leaving Home: A highly visual effect where an ordinary key melts on and off a solid cord.
- In a Flash: A shocker where a marked coin burns its way entirely through a deck of cards and stops precisely on a signed card.
- The Wichita Slip: A renowned bottom-deal card sleight used to seamlessly force a card on a spectator.
He is also known as a stand-up comedian and authored a book about the art of stand-up, Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy in 1999. However, he is best known for the many magical effects which he has published to help magicians develop their craft. His most well known works include his “Revolutionary Coin Magic” and “Revolutionary Card Magic” DVDs.
In 2009, Sankey announced that Andi Gladwin and Joshua Jay were in the process of writing his complete works in a trilogy of books. In 2012 The Definitive Sankey volumes 1–3 were released in both a regular edition three book and a single DVD format and a deluxe version which has an extra DVD and is signed by Jay.
Sankey’s website reflects his extraordinarily large contribution of magical effects to the magic industry with this statement: “Jay also holds the world’s record for creating more original illusions than any other living magician.”
