The Secrets of Reading Cards While Dealing

The Secrets of Reading Cards, by E. E. Selby.

After an email conversation with a good friend I recently found myself looking up this old booklet to learn that it sold in an auction earlier this year, which I had been online bidding on. Not the book but on other items. It was estimated to sell for $200-300.

When the auction was over and the dust settled it had sold for $676.00. Not bad for an 8 page booklet.That's almost $100.00 per page.

The book has one illustration showing a peek method.

I made a few bids during the auction on other things and and being in a different country I had to wake up around 3am to bid. Unfortunately I'd gotten my timing wrong and joined bidding too late to bid on the main item I wanted, which was one of the first items in the auction, and to make things worse it sold for a lot less than the listed estimate. Saved some money that day.

I did bid on a few small items later in the auction but they all got swept up in high bids, so I walked away empty handed.

Anyway back to the booklet. I was able to look through it recently and one fun thing I discovered is that the only illustration in the booklet uses the same card I used in all of the peek illustrations I did for my last book project, where I'd included descriptions of more than a dozen different peeks. The card I decided on for all of the illustrations was the four of clubs, which I'd decided would read clearly whether printed in colour or black and white, and the 4 had a shape less likely to be confused with other numbers. Seems E.E. Selby might have had similar ideas.

The illustration shown below is NOT from the Selby book and is also a different peek than the one in the Selby book which occurs while dealing. Here the index is exposed only very slightly so it's quite hard to read, but a close look will reveal the 4 of clubs.

Oh, and if you're interested in knowing the method Selby teaches for reading cards while dealing, you can find out for as little as $.676.00.