Starting TODAY you can list items on Lots of Magic completely free. There are no setup fees for items listed, which means that if your item doesn't sell for whatever reason, it would have cost you absolutely nothing.

There costs are unchanged for the special features, like bold, highlighted, and being listed on the home or category pages, and adding media (although not if it is a youtube clip and you just paste the embed code) etc. but for standard listings the cost is now - FREE

Tip: To make sure you get the most amount of interest in your product, remember to promote it on facebook, twitter, and any BBS systems you are a member of. Also, make your listing last no longer than 10 days - no-one wants to bid on an item that has 3 months to go...

We look forward to serving your in the future, and seeing all the new items you will be listing in the near future for FREE.

Dear Fellow Magician,

If you are going to Blackpool Magic Convention 2009, and would like to help out your Lots of Magic community, then please read on.

We at Lots of Magic are very excited about this new auction community that is being created, and just like every new initiative, it will take time to build, and get the word out, so we are asking all of our current users for help. We all benefit from having as many people as possible using the site, selling and buying. The more people we have using the website, the more choice of lots there will be, and more buyers means better and quicker sales as good prices. With this in mind, we would like to ask for your assistance during the Blackpool Magic Convention 2009, by spreading the word about the website as much as you can.

We have some flyers with a discount code that we will be distributing around the hotels (but not within the convention centre), and we would like to request that you to do the same, to ensure we get the most coverage.

As a thank you, we will credit your account with £10.00 for use on listing and final selling fees. If you feel you are able to help then please email: admin@lotsofmagic.co.uk with your username, and we will arrange everything for you. If you would rather not join in, then we wont be offended and we hope you enjoy the convention.

Thank you in advance for your help.

All the best,

Lots Of Magic Admins
Dave Allen & Gordon Drayson

The Launch Party was held on January 7th 2009 at The Questors Theatre, Ealing, and it was a pretty amazing evening. I will leave it to one of our guests to tell you about it. This review was posted on the internal maillist for The Magic Circle, and I am grateful to Clive Hyams for allowing me to re-publish it here for all to see.

Wow - WHAT a party.

LOTS of magic the auction web site for magic was launched last evening and we had quite a party.

Gordon Drayson and Dave Allen put together a show that if you missed you should be kicking yourself all over town this morning.

I was proud to be in amongst the Close Up Team of Kerry Scorah, James Stubbs and Dean Maudsley entertaining 200 + magicians for an hour before the main event.

In addition Ian Tom as Toffee the Clown on stilts and Carl Charlesworth relaxing in his giant bunny’s hat made up the pre main event entertainment.

Once we were settled in the main theatre Gordon and Dave then introduced the new web site and with some clever use of technology (by Marc Summers) were able to show the assembled masses how easy it is to register and more importantly how easy it is to buy and sell magic related items on the site.

I predict this site will be one of the most important magic web sites in the world within a year, probably much sooner.

I urge you not to delay in registering by visiting lotsofmagic.co.uk

It’s free – so do it now.

You’re going to do it sooner or later, it’s destined to be as essential to magic as being a member of this list or indeed a member of TMC, but I would do it now if I was you, before Gordon and Dave realise they could make some money out of this and start charging for registering.

The whole idea is to remove magic items from the likes of eBay where they are exposed to the casual visitor.

This must be the biggest and most practical attempt to conceal magical secrets from the general public for a long time, certainly I can’t think of a bigger attempt since TMC was formed and put non exposure high on its list of rules.

Anyway John Archer was introduced as the compare and he entertained us for the rest of the evening, John is just such a funny guy.

I am pleased to say and luckily for you if you missed the show, Bob Hamilton recorded the whole show and so it has been preserved for prosperity – if you ever see a DVD of the show up for sale I would snap it up, it was a great show.

I have so much to do today after being away for most of yesterday that I don’t have time to report act by act the show; others will no doubt do that later but I must say EVERY act was truly top draw.

They included…

Mark Shortland
Michael Pearse
Richard Pinner

Romany
John Archer
Tim Shoesmith
Amethyst

After the mid show interval two lots were auctioned by John Archer, one lot donated by David Berglas and the other by our President Ali Bongo were competitively bid for by two in the audience, it got far to rich for the rest of us. The money raised is being donated to the theatre to help support a very worthwhile cause, they are an amateur organisation that act in a very professional way and gave the team some great support all day.

The fact that EVERY act and all the supporting team (Roy Marsh and Natalie) gave their services is a truly remarkable achievement of Dave and Gordon and shows how importantly this initiative is seen by these top professional magicians.

The closing act AMETHYSTS who travelled for 4 ½ hours down from Scarborough, were with us for most of the afternoon and evening and then left to travel back home leaving at about midnight got me thinking – this is a truly outstanding effort to support the idea and they didn’t even get expenses – an amazing effort and so well appreciated as their 20 minute illusion act topped the bill.

It was great to see David Berglas and Spyros in the audience but not one single TMC council member was to be seen, they had foolishly arranged a Council meeting for the same night and whilst not postponing it to take up Gordon and Dave’s offer to attend and enjoy top notch seats, must now be seen as a BIG mistake, but it does show their dedication to the job that not one bunked off to come and watch the show.

Anyway almost 300 people in the audience were grateful to Gordon and Dave and the whole team for putting on a great show and to think none of us paid a penny for the tickets means you missed a great night if you were not there.

History now!

Okay so you wanted to read all of this before you registered, I don’t blame you, but

www.lotsofmagic.co.uk

is waiting for you to register, so what are you waiting for?

We have created various ways to keep up to date with new auction items, to make it easier for you to receive the information in the way that suits you best.

Twitter

You can now watch for new auctions being posted using twitter - why not follow us: http://twitter.com/lotsofmagic

RSS Feeds

If you are using an rss reader, the subscribe to our feeds from the following page: http://www.lotsofmagic.co.uk/rss_feed.php

We have listed a few FREE rss readers on this page also, some of them web based, so you will always be informed about new auctions that are posted, and never miss something that could be of interest to you.

We have added lots of new features to the website - and would be grateful if those using the site could test them and report any errors.

• Added a Live Help facility - This is a BIG one... If you require help, and we have an operator available, you can click on the button top left, and chat (type, not audio) to an administrator who should be able to help you.

• Sent by, and Tracking Numbers - when you sell an item, from within the members area you can mark the item as sent, how it was sent, and a tracking number if there is one. These details will then appear in the winner members area. Useful if you are sending an item by courier, or recorded / special delivery.

• Auction Ending Reminders - you can now have the website email you a set period of time before an auction ends. Make sure you are logged in, go to the auction item you are interested in, and then pick a reminder period from the drop down menu just below the item picture. You can set your reminder to be anything from 5 minutes to 24 hours.

• Upload Avatar - you can visit your profile in the members area and upload a square picture of yourself, which will be shown on all of your auctions, as well as your reputation pages. If users see a friendly face it will give them more confidence to bid, and buy from you.

• The Members Menu in the left hand column is now only available when you visit the members area. This will make it easier to see the categories list and find the items you are interested in bidding on.

We will let you know when further updates are made to the website. Please visit the contact page, or click on Live Help if you have any problems, or error reports.

All the best,
Lots Of Magic Administration Team

For those of you who have been testing this website you will notice that it now looks and works completely differently to a few days ago.

We were getting reports from users that they were having issues with the website software, including bidding for items, and confusions over who won an auction, as well as sellers not receiving emails telling them who had won. We made a decision that this just wasn't good enough, and if we were to create the best auction website for magicians and entertainers, we need to do something, and fast. So we scrapped the software (at great cost to ourselves) and searched to see if we could find a better solution.

And we think we have done just that...

The new software is much more stable, has more features, great support (so we can fix any issues quickly) and overall we are much happier with it. You will need to re-register to get yourself back up and running, but we think you will like it as much as we do.

We require your help now, more than ever. As we speed towards our launch date and party on Wednesday 7th January, we need to ensure that all the bugs, and problems are ironed out on the website. Please register, post new auctions, and have a good look around. We need to find out if there is anything that doesn't work as expected - or if you feel we need to explain how to do something better. Please send your comments to us using the form on the contact page.

The downside to this change is that all live auctions were taken offline. If you require help posting an auction, then please let us know how we can assist you.