From time to time, the following program appears on eBay as a 1925 original, but it was produced in the late 1960s or early 1970s:
The one produced above had a sticker on the back that said, Original Magic Memorabilia from the TEMPLE COLLECTION.
However, the original 1925 Program (snippets below) was printed on thinner stock and had some subtle formatting and spacing differences. Most noticeable are:
the top of the original program,
the end of Act I in the original lists The Miracles of Mahatma and The Whirlwind of Colors vs showing up after the Ten Minute Intermission,
And the bottom of THE RIBBON CURTAIN section in Act III.
Snippets courtesy of McCord Museum.
This is fantastic, and a great service! I was thinking about doing a similar post when I saw one of these recently pop up on eBay. But I had never seen an original and didn’t have much to offer in ways to identify a repro. Now I see the repro isn’t a facsimile as I always thought, but a recreation. Different typeface, etc., and that error!
BTW, the one I have (which I must have gotten sometime in the 70s or early 80s) has no stamp on the back. There’s nothing to flag it as a repro. Seems to me the majority aren’t identified with a stamp?
Would still love to know the year these were made and what the story is behind them.
Thanks Joe!
The stamp is actually on the packaging that the repro came in. I got it as part of large lot of Houdini items many years ago. Arthur Moses wrote a Magicol May 2011 article, titled “Houdini Memorabilia Fakes – True or False” and this playbill was discussed as being produced in the 1970s, but I don’t have a copy of it. Paging Arthur!
Oh yes! I do have a copy. Arthur doesn’t say all that much more about it, other than at the time it was “advertised as a reproduction.”
BTW, one of these is on eBay right now at $75 with 3 bids.
Great Joe! I wanted to sell my reproduction for a pile of cash as the original, and now you ruined my scheme! 🙂