Columbus Neighborhoods
Hidden Treasures From a Magician’s Collection Revealed!
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Dr. Timothy Moore built a collection of magic items, including tricks and relics from magic greats.
In 35 years, Dr. Timothy Moore of Grandview Heights, Ohio amassed a collection of hundreds of items, including tricks and relics from magic greats like Harry Houdini. Now he's pulled his greatest trick of all, he made his massive, private magic collection disappear. The collection of vintage illusions and historic memorabilia will become a new museum at a magic venue and restaurant in Chicago.
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Columbus Neighborhoods is a local public television program presented by WOSU
Columbus Neighborhoods
Hidden Treasures From a Magician’s Collection Revealed!
Special | 3mVideo has Closed Captions
In 35 years, Dr. Timothy Moore of Grandview Heights, Ohio amassed a collection of hundreds of items, including tricks and relics from magic greats like Harry Houdini. Now he's pulled his greatest trick of all, he made his massive, private magic collection disappear. The collection of vintage illusions and historic memorabilia will become a new museum at a magic venue and restaurant in Chicago.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipI was approached to have the whole collection put into a museum together as one unit, and I've made the incredible decision to let it go.
What's great about this collection is it is now gonna be going to a place that the public is gonna be able to see, and it's literally gonna be a museum.
This really is, it's the first time in the Magic collecting, over 100 years now.
That everything is being put together in one place and it's gonna be available to the public.
My name is Dr.
Timothy Moore.
I fell in love with magic when I was 10 years old.
It changed my life.
Pull a coin off their sleeve, right?
And of course, uncles still do that.
And, but magicians, we do it more than just once, you know.
Most people say, can you do it again?
Yeah, sure.
What magic does is it cracks that nut open, if you will, to bring back that amazement and that wonder.
And to be able to do that for somebody else in that moment, it's hard to describe the fulfillment that comes in.
To your own heart.
I started collecting in my early 30s.
I've been collecting for 35 years and it was a whole new avenue of learning about these great magicians.
I've seen grown men in tears up here, seeing the collection.
That has provided me a lot of satisfaction and being able to share what I've been able to put together over the last 35 years.
That's an exquisite image of Houdini, 1906.
And of course, he's doing his famous escape act right there.
Abraham Lincoln himself, he would have various magicians perform on the White House lawn for the kids of the fallen soldiers from the Civil War.
So pretty interesting, amazing piece of history.
Howard Thurston, because he's buried here in Columbus.
He became the world's best, greatest magician at that time.
This is one of my favorite pieces.
This is a one-of-a-kind that I know of, what we call cabinet photo.
He signed it handcuffed, Houdini.
This is 1903.
What's more important than the number of pieces is the quality of the pieces themselves and what are the stories that are connected.
And so when this is all together, it's a more complete, more satisfying, more interesting story about the history of magic.
And that in and of itself is magic.
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