The blade box is a coffin-shaped box with room for a young lady to lie down in. After the box is closed with the young lady inside, many large blades are passed through the box and the marks are allowed to see (for a fee) how the lady could possibly be still in the box.

Some performers pitch it as a trick and some pitch it as a marvelous feat of contortion (i.e., they lie--er, use showmanship!).

 

My blade box is not a tight fit but does look deceptively impossible to the audience. Like all pitches, you really have to learn it from someone and then adapt it to suit your style of presentation.

 

I'll never forget trying to teach a line to a new performer (it was one of those lines that you say while the tip is coming up to keep on grinding out that money). He was having trouble remembering it, so I kept calling his home and leaving it on his answering machine. The line was/is: "She's trapped, twisted, bent, contorted, her body entwined, mangled and tangled around those steel blades, in the cramped confines of that coffin-like cabinet. How does she do it? How does she survive? You see, you decide! What a shape, what a shape, what a shape she's in!"

 

BTW, I worked the blade box for Whitey Sutton for several years on Strates, and it was the nicest one I ever saw. I wish that I could have bought it, too.

Budda papers (as opposed to another pitch item, Budda Money Papers, which are folded papers used to switch a coin or bill) were for "fortune telling".

 

As I understand it (this was before my time), blank papers were sold to the marks, and then signed by them. They were then passed through the steam of some heated chemical solution and messages or "fortunes" would appear on them and they were given back to the marks to read.

 

I'm told that it was very time-consuming and that the chemicals used smelled like rotten eggs!

 

Give me the wonder mouse pitch any day!

JB 3 19 99