Magic historian and bookseller Philip David Treece discusses founding CollectingMagicBooks.com, publishing works on iconic London magic shop Ellisdons, and preserving magic's printed heritage. He shares insights from his conservation background, approach to curating rare books, and publishing projects including "The Collected Writings of John Nevill Maskelyne." Philip offers valuable advice for magic book collectors and reveals how his experience as a customer shapes his bookselling philosophy.

Adrian Tennant:

Coming up in this episode of The Magic Book Podcast…

Philip David Treece:

As someone who for years before I knew I would be in this field, I was a customer of these magic shops and bookshops, and I know which ones I liked and which ones I didn't, and so I just basically try to emulate the ones that I liked, and look at it from the customer's viewpoint.

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

Hello, thank you for having me.

Adrian Tennant:

Can you tell us about your first exposure to magic?

Philip David Treece:

It would have been The Paul Daniels Magic Show, which in the UK was a huge institution. It went on for years and years. When I was a toddler, it was just coming to an end, so I caught it probably the last couple of series. For my fourth birthday, I got The Paul Daniels Magic Set, which they must have produced millions of. They're the start of many, many magicians' careers and magic hobbyists' careers and things. Yes, it was that magic set when I was four years old.

Adrian Tennant:

Well, excluding the instruction manual that accompanied that Paul Daniels magic set, do you remember your first magic book?

Philip David Treece:

Yeah, well, I think I do. When I got into it, my parents were very into books already, so we pretty much bought anything in any jumble sale or charity shop. And I think the first one was Ali Bongo's book, "Be a Magician." Ali Bongo was the creative mind, well, one of them behind The Paul Daniels Magic Show, so there's a connection there. And it's a really lovely book. I've still got it and it has lots of good effects in and it also has all of the interesting behind-the-scenes theory and talks about magic shops and talks about publishers and things. So it was a very nice start.

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

I don't think it was. I think the things ran parallel really. I'd already started collecting before I was studying to be a conservator. And then I specialized, for my undergraduate, I did a magic set, a Bland magic set for my sort of final piece. And for my masters, I also did a large piece on the unique problems that magic collections have compared to a standard museum collection. So I was already seeing if that field would be something I could work in. And I did a few bits, but the market's just not big enough, really. So I moved into more standard conservation. But I was already collecting before that, and it just was a nice fit.

Adrian Tennant:

You mentioned, was it a Bland magic set?

Philip David Treece:

Yes, there's only a couple in existence, I think. So it's like the large Hamleys magic set, professional magic sets that were made, so filled with German and French apparatus. And they were originally Blands sets that I think they were produced by Hamleys as well, but obviously Hamleys bought Blands. So it's a huge box. It's filled with lovely turned German apparatus and stuff. So that was my main piece of my undergraduate. And then weirdly just last year, I was offered the very same set, but in more complete condition. So when I say I only know of two, I am lucky enough to have both. Which is funny because I don't have any of the Hamleys ones, but there you go.

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

He approached me, so he'd already done two of these books, one about unusual house bricks and another about a very interesting collection of ephemeral items and yogurt pots and things like that, so quite unusual things. And he'd found me on Twitter, I think it was, just while looking around at unusual collections and things. I think it helped that my blog was called Collecting Magic, so I think there was already something that probably just he found through that. So he came for a day and at the time he didn't know what he was going to concentrate on, whether it would be magic packaging, you know, because I have my sort of main collecting area is early magic and joke novelties, things like that. He was sort of thinking more about doing Ellisdons' packaging, which is a novelty company, which I'm sure we'll get onto. But instead he thought that the real variety was in the printed material and that was what the book ended up being about. Magic booklets and magazines and books from kind of the Golden Age of publishing in magic.

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

Adrian Tennant:

In "Magic Papers," you observe that many magic publishers were led by one person, each with different priorities and tastes. These included Percy Tibbles, also known as Selbit, of course, Will Goldston, Harry Leat, Percy Naldrett, one of my favorites, Eric C. Lewis, and Edward Bagshawe. Philip, how did what we now call self-publishing shape how magic was shared during that period, would you say?

Philip David Treece:

Well, I think it was just that it was independent. It wasn't controlled. It didn't have to be commercial, which meant that you got very creative ideas that might have been turned down by a bigger magic shop still being printed. It didn't have to be popular. And often it was controversial. You had, you know, as you mentioned, you know, Goldston, for instance, had a very opinionated approach to a lot of things and rubbed people up the wrong way quite often, as did Harry Leat, who was printing all of his own stuff. And that also created a kind of energy in the magic community, I think, and did lead to a big growth. I mean, for instance, when Will Goldston was making some of the most beautifully produced magic publications with some of the best artists at the time, you know, artists who worked for major magazines at the time and artists who illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories, you know, for their day job. those things were done out of competition, out of fierce competition. And he was using big department store money. He wasn't using his own money. He was using big department store money from Gamages to get them made. And I think without these strong characters pushing forward their own agendas, we'd have a much less interesting archive of magic literature to look at.

Adrian Tennant:

Well, as you mentioned, you also write about the illustrators whose artwork gave books published during the Golden Age their distinctive visual style. Some were able to leverage family connections, like Selbit, whose brother Sidney brought his skills to Percy's books. Philip, do you have any favorite authors or publications in your collection?

Philip David Treece:

Well, the Goldston stuff I do really enjoy looking at, maybe more for its appearance and enjoyable content. A lot of the tricks in it were never built and never worked. He liked to imagine things often. I think in terms of what I use, I go to the most day-to-day, more from a magic history angle, it would be Fergus Roy's more recent books - "The Davenport Story," it's called - is a series of four books which don't just encompass the Davenports. They cover every other business going on that they were involved in at the time. So that's an incredible resource. And I try to think of other practical magic books that I enjoy reading. I'm extremely old-fashioned. I really like the Bruce Elliott books. Although they're made for a popular audience, they're incredibly practical. They're very well described and they're beautifully illustrated as well. And I think they're probably the predominant books that I enjoy going to rather than just for work.

Adrian Tennant:

Do you have the Fergus Roy follow-up about Will Goldston?

Philip David Treece:

Yes, I do. Yes. Yeah.

Adrian Tennant:

That's a good read.

Philip David Treece:

It is. It's brilliant.

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

Yes, it's all split up and compartmentalized either into the era of the book, so you've got new books and they're split into new instructional, new magic history, or you've got your used, your vintage, your antique books. So just essentially a simple way of splitting them by age in case you have a specific interest in that field. And then I also do it by subject matter. So if you're just looking for biographies, you can go on that and it'll put all your new and used biographies and coin magic, for instance, it'll have those books together. So, I aim to have more or less all good books that are currently in print and available. Obviously, I can't get everything. Some people have exclusivity and things. And I also try and keep people interested in different fields of used books and vintage and antique books. I try and represent everything I can there. Obviously, you can't always control what you get in and out. You know, what comes in varies a lot. But I'm coming up to something like two or three thousand books in stock. And then I've got ready to come into stock as I gradually chip through it, you know, a few more thousand. So it will keep, it is, you just keep growing every year by three or four hundred books and that's even accounting for obviously the ones that sell and go out, you know. So yeah, if you like magic books, then hopefully you'll find something there.

Adrian Tennant:

Well, I'm sure running an online magic bookshop comes with some unique challenges, but how do you manage the logistics of storing and organizing those thousands of books?

Philip David Treece:

Well, with difficulty, I guess is the quick answer. You have to be very disciplined. So every book has its place. So if an order comes in, I can go straight to it. That's the most important thing. And I just re-shelved my main storeroom. Good shelving is very important to be able to access everything easily. And I do currently have storage as well. I have a storage unit that is nearby. So that's not ideal, but that's why I try and keep the stuff that's not yet in stock there. So everything that's on the website that you can see is always in stock physically with me, so it will be easy enough to get that. But we are moving to a bigger house next year for this very reason. We didn't buy this house with the intention of having a magic bookshop in it, but that's what we've got!

Adrian Tennant:

How do you acquire the previously owned books you sell at collectingmagicbooks.com?

Philip David Treece:

A few places. We've bought up quite a few whole estates when magicians passed away, and I've bought one which was a magic society that wanted to get rid of its library. That's when the big lots come in, and I also have quite a lot of customers who will, when they want to thin out areas of their collection, will get in touch directly, and we can usually work something out there. And i do buy individual books at auction from other book dealers as well - like quite a few of the bigger book dealers will approach me sometimes when they don't want to sell the stuff where they got too much in at once or whatever. I just recently a few weeks ago went to Hay-on-Wye and came back with a few hundred books from there. But Hay-on-Wye for Americans - this is a big huge book town in Wales and yeah so it's all sorts of places really.

Adrian Tennant:

I know this can be something of a hot topic judging from certain Facebook communities. What's your approach to pricing previously-owned magic books?

Philip David Treece:

Well, there's a few things I look at. I keep a record of all titles. So every time a book sells, the condition, the edition is recorded with the price. I'm not looking for maximum profit. I'm looking for happy customers who are going to come back to me. That's my key thing. As someone who for years before I knew I would be in this field I was a customer of these magic shops and bookshops and I know which ones I liked and which ones I didn't and so I just basically try to emulate the ones I liked and look at it from the customers viewpoint. And so you know I don't tend to rely on AbeBooks and other online sites for values because - it's a bit of a boring fact - but a lot of them use this algorithmic things where they price off other books that are listed. So if, for instance, a bookseller decides to set their book at 5 percent more for one title than their rival, and their rival does exactly the same, the book will increase. Both books will then bounce off each other, increasing the price. And that's why sometimes when you search for a book, there'll be one copy or two copies on eBay, and there'll be a thousand pounds each. People are like, "Well, that doesn't make any sense. It came out two years ago, and it was 10 pounds!" There's these funny things that go on in that, you know, Abe and Amazon world of used books. But there's also a lot of very good book dealers who I will reference with, as I'm sure they do with me. It's about fairness. Ultimately, it's about making sure that people come back. I just don't want people to feel ripped off. I mean there are valuable books on my site, there are expensive books on my site, so there will be things. And obviously sometimes you get a very good price on Facebook, maybe on eBay, you can get bargains. That doesn't mean that when a professional company that's packaging things right, doing things correctly, running the customer service, all the rest, that doesn't mean that they can match those prices always. You're not just paying for the book, you're paying for the service as well. And so there are, and I've said a hundred times, nothing has a set value. You know, a cynic might say the price is whatever anyone's willing to pay for it, but that's obviously not always true either, because you might have the book on the shelf for 10 years if you've got a silly price on it. So yeah, it's a lot of things. I think it's a hot topic for good reason as well, like as people do sometimes push things a bit. I'm as irritated by that as by customers, I think. But yes, it's not a straightforward answer.

Adrian Tennant:

This is an audio-only podcast so people can't see your packing table over your shoulder. But as somebody who has bought books from you and had them delivered to me in the States, I can attest to the fantastic packaging and everything arrives in pristine condition, which is amazing in and of itself in this day and age. Well done, good job with the packaging!

Philip David Treece:

No, thank you. It is something that is one of the main focuses, to be honest. It's probably 20 percent of my time is packaging books. But that's just because as a customer, so often you'd buy a book and it would be dropped in a little plastic bag with nothing, just put through the post and would come dented and bashed or worse. And there's nothing worse than that.

Adrian Tennant:

Philip David Treece:

It was mainly how little had been written about Ellisdons. I think the main catalyst for me was Fergus Roy's book on Davenports and how brilliant they were and how thorough they were. And I just realized Ellisdons was not represented, certainly in magic history, was not represented at all, really, aside from Fergus Roy mentioning it and many magicians mentioning it as the way they got into magic. Because Ellisdons sold into Woolworths. The UK version of Woolworths was a global chain. It's now gone in the UK but they've sold these extremely affordable tricks the first time probably that a working class people could buy their children these magic tricks. And so they had a huge influence on creating the magic world we have today in the UK and many people reference them as their start. But yes it has kind of been ignored - or not deliberately ignored - but just, you know, because I think they didn't have a very strong market with professional magicians it's often been overlooked, even though many as you mentioned many professional musicians did go to their magic department in London where there was much more of a community going to see you know Alex Elmsley and people like that work there. And well, sorry, he didn't work there but he was a regular there and he developed the Elmsley Count there with Delvin, so there's a lot of people crossing over in the London magic scene in Ellisdons, but that's often been forgotten. I thought it was worth writing about as well because I thought it had a wider appeal than just magic historians and magic people who like reading magic history. The American equivalent would be Adams, you know, S.S. Adams. And there's been two books, I believe, written about Adams, you know, so that that is something that was just lacking here in the UK for Ellisdons.

Adrian Tennant:

Well, I understand they started in New Zealand, grew the business in Australia, but then a scandal led to the family moving to London. So how did you research the story?

Philip David Treece:

I was very fortunate that both the New Zealand and the Australian governments have the foresight to have their digital newspaper archives online for free, which is not something we have in the UK. We have to pay to view our newspaper archives. So a lot of it was there online, but it did require literally reading every single excerpt about Ellisdons, which took a huge amount of time. And so yes, it was mainly through that newspaper archive that I got the information. And the family, they used to be very diplomatic. The family were lovely and very communicative and have since enjoyed the book and read the book. but I think they were understandably a little bit reluctant to engage at the very start of it because they didn't know who I was and it was also a very stressful time in terms of COVID happening and so lots of stuff was going on. So I didn't have anything to go on from the family on those early years. And it is very important to say, I always try and make the point that the scandal was related to the very senior one member of the family and his sons and grandsons completely turned the business around and weren't involved in any wrongdoing, any financial impropriety. Once the business came to London, it was kind of behind that. And that's important to mention.

Adrian Tennant:

Well, your Ellisdons books include 82 pages of color plates. Philip, how did you decide what visual material to include?

Philip David Treece:

It was a long process. The largest part of my personal collection is Ellisdons items, probably, so I do have a lot to draw on. I had already considered doing a kind of picture book on Ellisdons. I think it came out of Patrick Fry and our discussions about that. But I decided that it would be better to write the full history and select the best. I mean, 82 plates is a lot for a relatively short book, so I did include quite a lot. But I wanted to include things that people would remember people who remember the company growing up so I've included a catalog pages from ten years apart so that hopefully most people would find something that chimes with them if they remember the company personally. And similarly, the products I tried to get a good age range on those. And then I've also included everything that's really surprising that they manufactured because they didn't just do jokes and off-putties. They had lots of these funny sidelines. They had like cigarette-rolling machines and they had a very early factory making vinyl, like squeezy toys for babies. They had all sorts of weird things that are quite entertaining and quite strange. And so I just tried to include as much as possible.

Adrian Tennant:

You published the books in a limited edition of 100 copies each, which came with a custom-made reproduction Ellisdons Postal Box, hand-stitched by a traditional box-maker in Sheffield. Philip, how do you determine how many copies of a book to print?

Philip David Treece:

It's a very imprecise science, it's not straightforward and I don't always get it right I have to say. I think with the Ellisdons book I felt it was quite a niche thing within the magic history world, and I thought a hundred, because I wanted to do hardbacks as well, a hundred was a good balance of it being cheap enough to print that I didn't have to price the books too high. And also would mean that I think everyone who was seriously interested to get a copy of the first edition hardback. And I possibly will do a paperback that includes both editions in one in the future. And then that's also why I really wanted to make the hardback special in this box and everything, so that there was a real point of difference between those and any future softback edition. But no, I think 100 is a good number, certainly in the UK, for Magic History, and it allows anyone who's really passionate about it to get one in the time that they're in stock, I think. Although, I have to say, I did a hundred of this Maskelyne book, the most recent publication. There's eight of those left and that's only been out for maybe a month or two, I think. So that has gone very quickly, which is not ideal, but it's part of the learning about what's more popular, what's less popular. I think in retrospect, I would have done 200, which isn't that many more, yeah really I think there is still a field that's quite small if you're doing things that are quite specialist. You know, if I did a Houdini book I'd be able to print a thousand but I'm not that interested in doing another Houdini book, so I still have to want to write the book or want to make the book to be able to do it and that might mean that it has a smaller market than there it could have, you know.

Adrian Tennant:

You recently published "The Collected Writings of John Nevill Maskelyne," which includes material published over a span of 40 years. You'd previously published facsimile copies of Maskelyne's books "Sharps and Flats," and "Modern Spiritualism." What prompted you to publish "The Collected Writings"?

Philip David Treece:

In my head, it's all one project really. So I did reprint the five core Hoffmann books quite early on in the company and after that I thought, "What's a logical next step?" And Maskelyne was the thing that came to mind because he's arguably the most significant figure in British magic history, or certainly one of them, and there's some very good books written about his various theaters, but not a great deal written about him. And I feel part of that is to do with how difficult it is to get the material. So I looked into the logistics of printing everything he'd done and if you were doing it in one book it was very difficult to include "Modern Spiritualism" and "Sharps and Flats" because of the huge page count of them and how physically small they are and the page sizes. So to do a facsimile in the bigger book would make the book too big to hold. So I thought, "Well, let's get those two out of the way," and I started with "Modern Spiritualism" which is extremely hard to get hold of. So I thought "That's a good thing to have out there anyway." So I did a hardback of that. And then "Sharps and Flats" has been reprinted quite a few times, and it's also available fairly easily as first and second editions of the original book. So I didn't want to do a hardback of that, but I did want to do an affordable edition of that. So I thought, "Well I get those two out of the way and then the main body of work that's from other sources would fit in one large book." And so it was kind of already, I'd already decided before I printed any of Maslelyne's stuff that it would end with this larger book that had some of his shorter books, shorter booklets and articles from different newspapers and magazines that he wrote or interviews with him as well.

Adrian Tennant:

What challenges did you face in organizing and presenting 40 years of such varied material?

Philip David Treece:

It wasn't easy. The first challenge was getting the material. So I did a thorough literature search and I say in the foreword of the book that it can't be complete. That's why it says "Collected," because there almost inevitably will be things that I haven't found and that other people haven't found. but I've certainly referenced every other list of his articles of his publications and I think I found two additional ones that I don't think anyone else had spotted. But that just made me even more certain that there must be more. But then it was getting the material which was very difficult for certain things. I was very generously helped by some collectors and loaned some pieces and there was a very lucky buy with the Appendix to "Maskelyne Supernatural." There's a book called, "The Supernatural" that had an Appendix that was just written by Maskelyne that he published separately. And that is extremely rare. And it's about how The [Little] Georgia Magnet did her tricks. And I bought a book for stock. I bought that "Supernatural" book for stock and it was just slipped in the back of it. And apart from going to New York and getting Houdini's copy, that was the only other way of getting a copy. So that was very fortunate. And that was the only one that I couldn't access in any way apart from getting a physical copy. So I was very fortunate with that one.

Adrian Tennant:

It's a great book. As you know, I own a copy.

Philip David Treece:

Thank you.

Adrian Tennant:

I got in early there. Your first book was, as I understand, the only biography ever published about Ernest Sewell. For people who don't know, who was he, and again, what drew you to telling his story?

Philip David Treece:

Adrian Tennant:

Well, your biography traces Sewell's journey from leaving school at 14 to joining the printing industry, through to becoming a BBC radio star, and of course a successful entrepreneur. How did you piece together his career trajectory given how little contact he appeared to have with the magic community?

Philip David Treece:

It was turning to the concert party side was the main key. So, although he wasn't in the magic magazines, he was in things like Variety and other more standard entertainment magazines, entertainment newspapers, and that was very helpful. Plus, I mentioned earlier my use of newspaper archives with Australia, but the British Newspaper Archive has a lot of these local newspapers, particularly Brighton and Bournemouth, and places that he performed that were well-known seaside places for this kind of entertainment. So that was a good place to go for specific dates. Actually, I do tell a lie earlier about the magic history books not mentioning him. There is one quite significant one, which is Eddie Dawes' book on Stanley Collins that does mention him because he did publish a couple of Stanley Collins' books and he was a junior member in one of Collins' seaside concert parties as well. So there were some connections there to go at, but again, very little in the magic press.

Adrian Tennant:

Just a reminder that you can be notified when new episodes of this podcast are published by subscribing to the email alerts. You'll find all the details on the podcast website at themagicbookpodcast.com, which is where you can also find transcripts plus accompanying blog posts with summaries, timestamps, and links to resources mentioned in each episode. Philip, when we were preparing for this podcast, you mentioned that magic history publishing is particularly challenging. Now, you don't wholesale your publications to dealers. What's the thinking behind this direct-to-consumer approach?

Philip David Treece:

It's mainly cost. It would be prohibitively expensive for me to publish more niche or specialist books and leave a margin for a wholesaler to stock them. So it just wouldn't be possible without essentially doubling the retail price of the books. And I think I hadn't foreseen the international nature of the bookshop. I think I send about half of my stock overseas now, which is not something that I'd expected. So, initially it just made a lot of sense to sell direct as I was mainly posting within the UK. That's changed, but thankfully, coinciding with that change, Royal Mail, the service I use, have also decreased their large parcel prices significantly. There are conflicting things but still the logic I try to use is it if if someone in America, for instance ... America, as a side note is the most expensive place in the world to send to apart from Australia, and that's within America that pricing, rather than getting it there say like Royal Mail have World Zone 1, World Zone 2, and World Zone 3 (America). So World Zone 3 is just America - they have their own pricing! But even with that, if I sold it to a wholesaler and they took their cut, it would still be cheaper for me to post the book directly to America for the consumer than it would be for them to buy from their local magic shop and me have had to sell it to them with me making a margin, the wholesaler making a margin, and the magic shop making a margin.

Adrian Tennant:

Now that you handle rare and historically significant magic books daily, has it changed your relationship with collecting them personally?

Philip David Treece:

Adrian Tennant:

Well, this is The Magic Book Podcast. So, Philip, what is your most cherished magic book and why?

Philip David Treece:

That's a really, really, really difficult question. I'm sure it's probably what everyone says. Can I have two? Is that allowed?

Adrian Tennant:

Yes.

Philip David Treece:

Okay. I think the first one would be, I've got Chung Ling Soo's personal copy of "Drawing Room Conjuring," by Hoffmann, and it's a very tatty copy and I don't know whether that's happened since he had it or whether that happened when he had it. I like to imagine it happened when he had it - that it got so tatty. I suspect it was because it's got the stamps from being sold at the auction after his death in London. So I suspect that whoever had it since then has cherished it much like I do. But I don't know because I got it again by pure chance. I bought the copy on its own just for stop and then I looked inside and was like, "Oh gosh, this is his copy!" So that's one. I think because of the connection there, there's something about the idea that he may have, especially as it was published in the period when he lived in America as well. It feels like it's a real significant thing for him, perhaps not. He might have picked it up a week before he dies at a secondhand bookshop, who knows? But that's one, and the other I just got very recently is one of Eddie Dawes' own copies of "The Great Illusionists," his book, which was the first magic book for an adult audience that I read as a boy and I've always really loved and referred back to. And yeah, recently one of his friends very kindly sold it to me. So that's very special for me.

Adrian Tennant:

I think that was a gateway for many of us. So interesting. You mentioned Hay-on-Wye. I can't overemphasize what an amazing place Hay-on-Wye is because one of the books in my collection, which indeed was from the Soo Collection because it also has that little purple stamp in front, I believe I purchased it in Hay-on-Wye. But I think I also paid quite a lot for it at the time. Philip, what's on the horizon? Do you have any new publishing projects that you can share with us?

Philip David Treece:

Adrian Tennant:

Collectors everywhere are going to love that.

Philip David Treece:

Adrian Tennant:

Okay, well we'll look out for that. For listeners interested in exploring magic history through books, what advice would you give about building a collection?

Philip David Treece:

That's tricky. I think have focus, try and decide where you want to specialize. I think I've gradually come to the realization that I'm not going to invest a huge amount of time investigating American magicians, and so I have stopped sort of religiously buying everything to do with that and I am concentrating much more on British and European stuff. Which is easier for me to get hold of too. I think if you're building from scratch, start with some really good general magic history books from around the world like get Eddie Dawes's "The Great Illusionists," get Milbourne Christopher's "Picture History of Magic," or I think he's had a few names for them and also where "The Illustrated History of Magic." I always get his titles confused because he's got two that have very similar names that they but those are brilliant and very easy to get hold of. Maybe see what tickles your fancy in there, see what really interests you, and then look at what's available. I think you can build a really good magic history collection without starting to buy the really special deluxe volumes and things. They're really interesting, they're really good, but I'd wait until you have a good general library first because you could get 10 general history books for the price of one sometimes when you're looking at the very rare, very specialist biographies. Also, don't invest all your money in Houdini books. They're really easy to get hold of. There's hundreds of them out there. There's two more produced a year probably. I absolutely love Houdini. I love reading about Houdini, but let's concentrate on some of the magicians for a while.

Adrian Tennant:

I'm curious, Philip, has your background working as a conservator in museums and historic buildings influenced your approach to handling and preserving magic books and ephemera, or indeed your interest in the social history surrounding, as we've talked about, everyday working magicians?

Philip David Treece:

Yeah, I'd say both. Starting with the first point about handling, it's mainly storage I think that's affected them most. I think it's really important to store your books correctly. It's really important to inspect your books. Don't leave shelves of books unlooked at for years because you may get damp, you may get all sorts of air circulation issues and you just want to catch things early when it comes to those things. One of the most common misconceptions is that you won't get damp books if your house isn't damp, and that's not true. If there's air that's just staying unmoving behind shelves of books, you will get damp there. So little things like that. Always inspect your stuff. And when you're storing booklets and things, don't get drawn in too much to plastic sleeves, because again, you're trapping air in there, you're trapping humidity in there. I mean, they're all good to use as long as you've got a good routine of checking stuff. So that's the first part. I think the second point about the social history is, yeah, very important. I do think, I mean, one of the first things you learn when you train as a conservator is that the financial value of the object in front of you is completely irrelevant. It's all about what it can teach you and what it can teach people in the future. You know, you're conserving it so that academics who have not yet been born or people who are interested in the field and not yet been born can get information from this item. And I think I've taken that across into magic. The way I often see it, there's kind of two parallel markets. When you look at these big magic auctions, there's the things that are obviously of value, you know, have an autograph of a famous magician or a piece of well-documented, catalogued, rare magic apparatus made by one well-known company. Tenyo items, for instance, are a modern example. But what do they teach you about magic history? Very, very little. While a scrapbook put together by an amateur magician will tell you a huge amount, potentially. Or a catalogue from an obscure firm. Those things, often, even if they've got a fraction of the financial value of a signature of Chung Ling Soo, or a postcard of Chung Ling Soo, which you can find reprinted in every biography of him, which is worth hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I mean, not that either is wrong. I think they're both valid. But I think for me, the thing that appeals to me is getting more information, creating, like for myself, an archive of stuff that I can use to do research rather than speculate on increasing in value, for instance, or things like that. They're not priorities for me.

Adrian Tennant:

If listeners would like to learn more about your pre-owned and exclusive new publications, what's the best way to do so?

Philip David Treece:

The newsletter, probably. We've got a newsletter that goes out about once a week. If you just go on the home page and scroll to the bottom you can sign up for the newsletter there and also in the same place there's our Instagram, our Facebook and our YouTube channels. Yeah, they're the best ways I think.

Adrian Tennant:

Excellent. Philip, thank you so much for being my guest on The Magic Book Podcast.

Philip David Treece:

Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Adrian Tennant:

You've been listening to The Magic Book Podcast. In this episode, we explored Philip David Treece's journey from magic enthusiast to conservation expert to magic bookseller and publisher. We learned about his work documenting important, but often overlooked, aspects of magic history, from the story of Ellisdons to the collected writings of John Nevil Maskelyne. Philip also shared valuable insights about the challenges and rewards of magic history publishing, and offered advice for collectors. His commitment to preserving and sharing magic's printed heritage helps ensure these important stories and resources remain available for future generations. You'll find the transcript accompanying this episode on the website at themagicbookpodcast.com, plus a blog post with a summary, timestamps and links to resources we mentioned. If you have a question or would like to suggest a topic for a future episode, please contact me, Adrian@TheMagicBookPodcast.com. Thanks for listening to The Magic Book Podcast. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next time, goodbye.