Product description: First of all, if you haven’t seen Michel Clavello lecture, you should stop reading this review and go buy it on Penguin, it’s so much fun to watch with real working routine for the professional. Anyway, PsiSet is something he has shown in his lecture and I immediately fell in love with it but it wasn’t available at that time. Michel finally released it and I can now talk about it. You get two decks but you only show one to your audience, they’re blank cards with “ESP” looking symbols on them. You can have several people to cut in the deck and remember their symbol and you can divine it without even looking at the deck. The second deck is a tossed out deck so you can force a symbol.
Price and where to buy it: This is sold at $39 and you can find it here : www.magicdream.fr
What you get: You get a cardboard box, nicely made but the cardboard is a bit fragile, which can results in the box being damaged during the shipping. Anyway, inside, you’ll find 2 decks and a video tutorial, which is really well shot and that you can easily understand. You get 8 full routines in it and there is something for everyone. The decks are made out of a strange material, like a plastic cardboard, it feels a bit weird but it handles well, and I can see them lasting a long time with the proper care. The first deck is the main one, the Psimbol deck, with all the “esp” symbols. The second one is the Psimind 2.0 which is the tossed out deck, made in a very clever way. For the price, I’m very impressed by this, the stuff is good quality and the routines are clever.
The pros and the cons: Here is the core of my review, let's begin with the cons, as I will usually be doing, I prefer to keep the good things for the end.
THE CONS:
Even if the cards are nicely made, the material used means they get fingerprints easily on them so you have to handle them with care.
If you want to do some of the routine, you’ll need to switch deck during the course of the trick which is not hard with proper audience management.
One of the deck can’t be handed out (the tossed out deck) but it was in the hands of the audience so there is no reason people will want to look at it.
THE PROS:
This is one of the most interesting mentalism piece I’ve seen this year, it’s simple, easy, strong and very versatile, you can do it in close-up or on stage, you can reveal the symbol by drawing them or directly telling them to your audience.
The main principle behind it is well known but Vernet has done a great job simplifying it and making it easy to learn.
The other principle in play is amazing, I’ve never seen something like this and I think it will fool many magicians, it’s so clever.
The fact you get 2 decks allow you to have the first deck examined by the audience, do several routines, switch for the other one and do the tossed out deck routine. This is so flexible and versatile, I love it.
The value of what you get is amazing, I really think this should be priced a lot more so not everyone can access it.
Overall rating: As I said, this is one of the most baffling mentalism piece I’ve seen in 2019, I love it so much I might consider buying 2 just in case the first one is dirty or grubby. I can definitely recommend this, 4/4 hearts.
As for the difficulty level, this is very easy to do and learn but the difficult part is to present it correctly, 2/5 stars.
Similar products: Mnemonica by Tamariz is the way to go if you like those kind of principles.