Magician values collection

Some people collect stamps. Others collect baseball cards. Steve Wyrick, a Las Vegas magician who headlines at the Aladdin, collects posters.

These aren't just any posters. They are stone prints made in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His stone lithograph posters were used to advertise magic shows.

Wyrick recently opened his home for a look at his varied collection. The magician's foyer is flanked by large pieces with smaller posters leading up the grand staircase. All are framed.

The one he likes most is near the main entry. It's a poster showing Harry Houdini. Not only is the subject of value, so is the company that made the poster -- the Strowbridge Lithography Company, which Wyrick called "the Ferrari" of printing companies for such posters. The high-quality Houdini print is one of only 10 in the world. It is also the poster other collectors are after him to sell.

In his game room, which by the way has no games in it, is another large piece the magician is proud to own. He called it the "crown jewel" of his collection. The poster is a late-1920s advertisement for famed magician Carter. Wyrick once was offered $75,000 for it. The poster once hung outside a London theater, then sat for years in some woman's basement.

The story behind it is seen in the framed photos hung next to the oversized poster.

"While it looks like it's in mint condition, this is the way it looked when I bought it," Wyrick said, pointing to the photos. "You can see how much is missing. There are large sections where the paper didn't exist and had to be restored by an artist."

Even though it was in pieces and degraded by the weather, the poster cost him $30,000 to obtain. Restoring it took another $14,000.

Very few of the 44 posters on display in his house were found in mint condition. For his entire collection, he's spent roughly $100,000 in restoration costs.

Wyrick said the expense was worth it. His collection is worth nearly $1 million.

"If these magicians only knew these posters that were glued to the walls would one day be worth $100,000 or $200,000," he said with a shake of his head. "Each piece, to me, tells a little story."

The framed pieces are in almost every room of Wyrick's two-story home at Red Rock Golf Club. The largest ones fill the upper walls of his open-ceiling living room. One of those is a 1912 poster called a "floating head" of Thurston, measuring approximately 15 feet by 12 feet.

"People call it, in loose terms of course, the `Holy Grail' of the Thurston pictures," Wyrick said. "There are only two in the world." He estimated its value at $50,000.

The details in the posters give a glimpse into showmanship and marketing tactics of the day. Besides featuring the magician for an upcoming show, they further promoted the hype that magic tricks originate from some underworld power.

In many of the posters red devils abound, as do three cartoonlike characters that look human except for the horns they sprout. The three are usually depicted gleefully poring over "The Book of Fates."

The antique posters are prominently displayed throughout the rambling house. In contrast, Wyrick's taste in furniture tends to be ultra-modern and takes a minimalist approach. The oversized living room, for example, has a glass and chrome coffee table, a free-form sofa and chair and a stark geometric sculpture.

Not all the posters in the collection are in Wyrick's house. There are 13 more in storage, waiting to be used in a small museum the headliner plans to have built in his backstage area at the Aladdin. The museum will be just for VIPs to view.

While his passion is collecting posters, Wyrick also has an antique magician's trick on display. It was used to saw a lady in half and is believed to be only the second such contraption built. The two red boxes rest on a velvet display table. The only restoration they required was replacing the rusted latches. Holes were cut at each end to allow the woman's head, hands and feet to poke through.

In olden days, after the boxes were pulled apart, Wyrick said, audience members were allowed to go on stage to feel for themselves the real-life appendages sticking out of both boxes. Then he stopped himself.

"Maybe I'm giving too much away here," he said. "Anyhow, it was kind of a prehistoric method (to do the trick). I don't think today it would fool anyone."


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