Peter Monticup Biography – MagicTricks.com Owner

It Started With a Change Bag

Peter's introduction to magic came when he was seven years old.

Prof. Henry Bessette brought a television into Peter's father's TV repair shop. When Peter's father later delivered the TV to the magician's home, Peter went along.

The young boy had never seen anything like it. The walls were covered with photographs and press clippings from Prof. Bessette's long career, and the house was packed with colorful magic apparatus, silk scarves, giant flowers and mysterious-looking props.

The Professor performed some magic for Peter. The first trick he showed him was a Change Bag: three separate silk scarves went into a bag and emerged as one large scarf decorated with a colorful dragon.

Peter was entranced.

Prof. Bessette invited the Monticup family to his home frequently, and Peter eventually became his assistant, carrying props on and off stage and learning from the master magician and the other professional magicians in the area.

From Neighborhood Magician to Paid Performer

Peter eagerly devoured the major mail-order magic catalogs and magazines, paying for each carefully chosen piece of magic apparatus by doing odd jobs for the local shopkeepers. He practiced constantly, recruited his younger sister as his assistant, and put on free shows for the neighborhood families.

Then, at 12, he had an inspiration.

Nationally famous magician Al De Lage — one of the professional magicians who most influenced young Peter — was scheduled to perform at the local Troy Boys Club. Peter's reaction was wonderfully simple:

So he went to the club and told manager Andy Semansko just that. Andy apparently admired the nerve. He hired Peter to perform a Thanksgiving show for $15, dinner for Peter and his family, and a newspaper write-up with Peter's photograph.

In his first paid show, Peter featured a Change Bag — the same kind of trick that had captivated him five years earlier.

Watch Al De Lage on To Tell the Truth and read Peter's memories of the magician who influenced him →

The show went well. Emma Willard School hired him next, followed by more Boys Club performances, Elks Clubs, YMCAs, schools and other organizations. As the bookings grew, so did the show.

He even performed at his own high-school prom, joking that he was the only student who was paid to attend.
By age 16, Peter was appearing on local television.

A Life of Performing Magic

During the 1970s, Peter became a weekly performer on UP UP AND AWAY, a children's television program in his native Albany, New York area. He also made regular weekly appearances on local TV programs including Dialing for Dollars and The Mimi Scott Show.

His career eventually expanded to theaters, conventions, corporate events, theme parks, private clubs and countless live performances. He has appeared in movies, filmed dozens of television commercials, and has even performed magic on radio — which is quite a trick when nobody can see it.

And, of course, along the way he owned some magic shops.

The Day Someone Handed Peter the Keys to a Magic Shop

One day Peter walked into a newly opened magic shop called The House of Magic.

Its owner, nightclub performer and bandleader Dave Osborn, was frantically trying to leave because of an emergency.

Dave asked Peter if he was a magician.

Peter said yes.

Dave handed him the keys.

Peter already knew how to perform magic. Now he had to learn how to demonstrate it — making a trick look wonderful while reassuring the customer, You can do this, too.

He loved it.

A few years later, Dave sold the shop and Peter took over. Peter later joined two other magicians to open MCM Magic — Monticup, Carroll and Miller.

Then Ronald McDonald Changed Everything

In 1979, Peter accepted a contract to portray Ronald McDonald throughout northeastern New York.

That same week, Jackie, who would later become Peter's wife and business partner, started a new job at the advertising agency Madison North, where she was the account executive handling the McDonald's account.

Part of her job was accompanying Ronald on live appearances and protecting him from overly enthusiastic fans.

Which meant accompanying Peter.

They quickly became friends. Over the next two years friendship became romance, and Peter and Jackie married in 1982.

A Magician and a Marketer

Jackie had an MBA in marketing and, after leaving the advertising agency in 1981, became a professor of marketing at SUNY Albany.

Peter and Jackie began looking for ways to combine their talents. Corporate entertainment was booming in the 1980s, so they built an entertainment company. Peter handled the performing; Jackie handled advertising and public relations.

Together they produced shows for corporations, conventions, theme parks, private clubs and theaters. They also helped open Albany's Comedy Works and established an advertising agency called The Small Business Specialist.

But Peter missed the part he enjoyed most: interacting with customers.

The Oldest Magic Shop in Watervliet

In 1988, Peter and Jackie opened another magic shop in the front of their Watervliet, New York home, a building that had once been a neighborhood grocery store.

They called it The Old Curiosity Shop.

Jackie's opening press release announced:

It was exactly the kind of place Peter loved: magic, customers, conversation and demonstrations.

Then, in 1994, a road trip changed everything again.

Charlottesville — Love at First Sight

Peter and Jackie were driving to visit friends in Asheville, North Carolina, when they stopped overnight in Charlottesville, Virginia.

It was love at first sight.

They immediately felt that Charlottesville was a place where they could happily live and open a magic shop. They learned about The Corner, the busy shopping district beside the University of Virginia, and went to look around.

Retail vacancies there were rare. As luck would have it, they arrived just as an agent was putting a For Rent sign on a small storefront in an ideal location.

Knowing this was an opportunity of a lifetime, they rented the space on the spot.

There was one minor complication.

They lived nine hours away.

Two months later they had moved to Charlottesville, and Magic Tricks opened on The Corner.

Then Came the Internet

In 1996, Jackie registered a remarkably good domain name:

Then she taught herself how to build a website.

At first, MagicTricks.com was simply another way for the Charlottesville shop to reach customers. It didn't stay small for long.

By 2001, the online business had grown so large that there was no longer enough time to operate both MagicTricks.com and the Charlottesville retail store. Peter and Jackie closed the physical shop and devoted themselves to the website.

The Magic Shop Counter Goes Online

For decades, Peter had stood behind magic shop counters showing customers what tricks actually looked like and helping them decide what they could perform.

When online video became practical, Peter and Jackie realized they could bring that same experience to people everywhere.

Peter began demonstrating tricks for the camera.

Today, those demonstrations are a fundamental part of MagicTricks.com. Peter doesn't simply show the prop — he performs the trick as an audience would see it.

The principle is the same one Peter learned behind the counter at The House of Magic:

The technology changed. The job didn't.

Creating Magic, Too

Peter hasn't just performed and demonstrated magic over the years. He's also created original tricks and routines of his own, including effects available exclusively through MagicTricks.com.

Poker Face is one example of the original magic Peter has developed during his career.

Monticup Is Magic

In 2014, Peter became the subject of Monticup Is Magic, a documentary short about his life in magic.

The film looks back at a career that began when a seven-year-old boy saw three silk scarves change into one — and follows the path that eventually led through performing, television, magic shops and MagicTricks.com.

Watch Monticup Is Magic →

Preserving Magic's Past

Peter's involvement with magic has never stopped at performing or selling tricks. He's also a lifelong collector and student of magic history.

Much of his early performing equipment was secondhand apparatus purchased from older magicians. Over time, Peter realized that many of those old props were pieces of magic history worth preserving.

His collection eventually grew to thousands of pieces of apparatus, photographs, playbills, posters, letters and personal items associated with magicians of the past.

Among the pieces and histories preserved by Peter and Jackie are material connected with Harry Houdini and the remarkable 19th-century magician De La Mano.