The Replete Card Link by Sixten Beme

“The Complete Card Link” demonstrated by David Persson

In 1979, Sixten Beme published his “The Complete Card Link” – where the centers are torn out off two cards, and then the remaining outer card frames are made to magically link together into a chain. Without a single false move, everything is then handed over directly to the audience, in a permanently linked condition. It created a buzz on its release, and it was performed in television by Doug Henning, Paul Daniels and others.

In 1996, Sixten published his second take on the effect “One Card Link”, where both card frames are torn from the same single card. Quite an accomplishment!

Sixten passed away in 2001 at the age of 76, right in the middle of preparing another set of his Complete Card Linking.
At the funeral, we all, both friends and family, shared wonderful and amusing stories about all the amazement Sixten had brought us. But now, both Sixten and his work is beginning to phase out of our collective memory, and it is way too early for that.
With the kind permission of Crillo and Ismo, the rights holders to Sixten Beme’s creations, all his work on the Linking Card effect can now be disseminated to a new generation of magicians.
This ebook collects both manuscripts, and also describes Sixten Beme’s unpublished favourite handling for informal situations – a quick preparation, which even fooled those who themselves performed Sixten’s original handling.

Tom Stone about Sixten Beme:
I first met Sixten Beme when I was a teenager back in 1985, at a magic convention, where he quickly gave me an acute feeling of unreality, when he – seemingly without doing anything fishy at all – caused plainly impossible things to happen. A corner was torn from a card I had signed all over, and suddenly that corner changed color… still signed, and the torn edge still matched the rest of the card. The center of two cards were torn out, and the remaining outer frames suddenly penetrated each other and became a chain…
I guess there was something in the way I looked at the pieces of cards afterwards, because after letting me stew in my own puzzlement for a few minutes, Sixten leaned closer to me, gave me a piercing look and said:

If these effects had been your ideas, how would you have solved it? What would you do, to come as close to this as possible? Think about it, then call me next week and tell me your solutions!

This was my first brainstorming challenge ever. And for the following two years, I would call Sixten over the phone once a week to tell him my latest solutions.
In many ways, it was Sixten’s brainstorming challenges that formed me and my approach to creating magic. I highly doubt any of my books would have become written, if I had not gotten this kick in the butt early on.