A Young Magician Wanted to Build an Epic Magic Collection. Did He Go Too Far?

T he trouble began with Harry Houdini’s beaver-skin top hat. 

Tim Moore — known in Columbus, Ohio, as Dr. Magic Smile — was a dentist and magician, in one. He performed sleight of hand to settle his patients’ nerves, and he helped run Magi­Fest, a longtime Columbus magic convention. But Moore didn’t just love magic. He had spent much of his life collecting antique posters and tricks that once belonged to history’s greatest magicians. 

One day in April 2011, a friend came to Moore with an irresistible offer: Houdini’s top hat. It was tall and dignified, nestled in the plush red lining of a weathered hat box, and Moore eagerly bought it. Soon, there were cuff links and walking sticks, monocles and stick pins — all of which, it seemed, had once belonged to the most revered magicians of the 19th and 20th centuries. Moore bought them all. 

Not long after, on a frigid January night, Moore invited a group to his home magic museum, a 1,000-square-foot space above his garage. Guests strolled the room with their mouths agape. Spotlight after spotlight fell on top-of-the-line display cases filled with the personal effects of magic’s forefathers. 

Long after midnight, one of the visitors, auctioneer Gabe Fajuri, left Moore’s home with a friend. When the car door shut, they fell into silence. “You ever think about how if something seems too good to be true, it probably is?” Fajuri asked his friend.

Over the past 15-plus years, Fajuri has sold tens of millions of dollars’ worth of magic collectables at Potter & Potter, his Chicago auction house. In all of those transactions, he had only ever sold a handful of the kinds of ­personal effects that lined Moore’s walls. Something wasn’t adding up.

Fajuri’s suspicions only grew when he returned to Moore’s house the following year. This time, Fajuri noticed a collector named Rory Feldman, who seemed to be keenly interested in the tour Moore was giving — as if to keep a close eye on him.

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The Wild World of Collecting

Few magicians ever become full-time professionals. Of the many who remain hobbyists, an insular, deep-pocketed subgroup takes its passion to the next level by collecting artifacts. These collectors play an outsize role in preserving magic’s history, maintaining dazzling private troves in homes across America. One man in the Bay Area owns so many magic books his home’s foundation had to be reinforced. “The magic wing in the Met will never be there,” says Jim Steinmeyer, a magic historian and longtime illusion designer. “So, our little world is doing whatever we can.”

Touring acts of magic’s golden era, in the early 1900s, papered towns with enormous colorful posters. Magic’s secrecy and niche appeal meant that by the mid-20th century, most of that history had ended up in trash bins and thrift shops. But collectors stepped up. By the 1970s, mailing lists circulated catalogs of $75 magic posters. What made collecting exciting for magicians was its low buy-in: With a little disposable income, you could own something connected to your idol. 

Boom times in the 1980s turned collectibles into investments, and real money entered the scene. It wasn’t long until Rory Feldman, an 11-year-old kid in Brooklyn, caught the collecting bug. In Smithsonian magazine, Feldman read an article about Ken Klosterman, a wealthy businessman whose farmhouse on the outskirts of Cincinnati contained the Salon de Magie, one of the largest private magic collections in the world.

To enter the Salon, visitors were told to board an elevator and descend more than 83 feet into an abandoned gold mine, which opened into a labyrinth brimming with magic treasures. In truth, the Salon de Magie was itself a magic trick: The collection resided in a glorified basement. But awestruck visitors hardly noticed. Between the prop-filled Egyptian tomb and the Victorian-esque music hall, there were posters, ephemera, and illusions everywhere you looked. In one room sat a chest supposedly used by Jean-Eugène Robert-­Houdin — the father of modern magic — to quell a rebellion in Algeria in 1856. Klosterman even owned Houdini’s belt buckle. (Houdini’s stage name pays tribute to his idol, Robert-Houdin.)

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Feldman was so taken with the Salon de Magie, he presented a report on the Smithsonian article in class for what he wanted to be when he grew up: a magic-museum curator. Soon, he started demonstrating tricks to raise money for antiques. One of his first pieces was a pair of Houdini’s handcuffs. Another was a top hat that once belonged to magician Howard Thurston.

During his prime, magician Howard Thurston was better known and more skilled than Harry Houdini. Barnaba/Condé Nast/Getty Images

Today, few recognize Thurston’s name. But at the start of the 20th century, he was the most famous magician in the world. His traveling Wonder Show of the Universe — 30 performers and 40 tons of props in all — was as familiar to the American public as the Ringling Brothers or Ziegfeld Follies. Shahs, czars, and presidents invited him to perform.

But it wasn’t just the treasures that had people whispering: It was Feldman. On the first day, he claimed as many Thurston-­related items as he could. At the auction the following day, he kept his hand raised, persistently outbidding the room. In one streak, he bought nearly a dozen consecutive Thurston lots. Lot 42, a poster of Thurston doing a mythical Indian rope trick, was estimated to be worth $2,000. Feldman offered $5,250.

By all accounts, Thurston was a more skilled magician than Houdini, and he was better known in his time. But while Thurston focused on getting audiences into theaters, Houdini built a PR machine that turned him into a legend. After Thurston died in 1936, many of his illusions and personal effects were freighted to a barn in Wisconsin. Before long, Thurston and his show were forgotten.

Collectors, however, remembered. By the 1980s, Thurston material circulated in higher volumes, thanks to decades of collectors chasing down memorabilia stashed with his descendants and former staff. When a teenage Feldman began collecting a decade later, the market had long centered on bigger names like Houdini — but someone could still become the preeminent Thurston collector. At age 16, Feldman traded out his Houdini handcuffs to buy more Thurston, a focus that would only intensify.

In 2010, a reporter visited the Feldman family home in Brooklyn, where there was a Thurston shrine. Nicole Bengiveno/”The New York Times”/Redux

On Sept. 23, 2000, more than 100 collectors converged on a Pennsylvania paper ­factory for the “sale of the century.” Inside sat four tons of material from a famed collection known as the Egyptian Hall Museum. Collectors lined up hours before doors were set to open, armed with walkie-talkies and maps of the factory’s layout. The first in line was Feldman, age 19.

In all, Feldman’s auction bill came in at nearly $89,000. The veteran magic collectors wondered aloud about the fast-talking, high-spending newcomer: Who is this guy?

Nearly three decades later, some collectors looked back on this auction as a sign of Feldman’s unmatched passion for Thurston. But by then, a darker undercurrent had arisen: A series of deceased collectors’ families alleged that in his zeal, Feldman deceived, defrauded, or stole. Feldman, in turn, considers himself the victim of a relentless smear campaign by a “magic mafia” seeking to punish a youthful interloper. Over the past decade, he once wrote, they have “attempted numerous times to ruin my life … over magic.”

A Fresh Face

Feldman’s splash at the Pennsylvania paper factory highlighted what made him so rare and, to some, so welcome: He was young blood in a community that needed it. Rising prices made magic collecting much less accessible than it once was — and in his youth, Feldman stood out. With dark-brown hair and an easy smile, the baby-faced Brooklynite cut a memorable figure. He also spoke exuberantly, at all times and on all things: Thurston, his own family, his love of magic, and his dreams of safeguarding its history.

Feldman launched a website, ThurstonMasterMagician.com, to showcase his collection. He fundraised to renovate Thurston’s neglected mausoleum. He produced When Thurston Came to Town, a nearly three-hour-long documentary that earned him a citation from the esteemed Society of American Magicians. Feldman’s grandest plan was to open a nonprofit magic museum on Coney Island.

But Feldman wasn’t universally beloved. Some thought he hadn’t paid his dues and shook their heads when he listed himself as a public figure on his Facebook page. Others muttered that his exhibitions at collector events displayed his deep pockets, rather than a lifetime’s worth of discernment. 

Feldman’s finances also fueled grumblings. Early interviews painted him as a wheeler and dealer of memorabilia, but those in the collecting world say he mostly bought. His mom was a schoolteacher; Feldman later recounted that he’d grown up on food stamps. His only documented job was a short stint as a real estate agent. He claimed to have fueled his collecting habit by quietly performing hundreds of gigs, from magic at corporate events to making balloon animals on the Staten Island boardwalk, while also selling unwanted items from collections he’d acquired. 

Wherever the money came from, it continued to flow. In three years, Feldman’s collection jumped from 18,000 items to nearly 40,000. A 2012 article in a Society of American Magicians Magazine compared the 31-year-old’s determination to that of Google co-founder Larry Page. 

Feldman’s meteoric rise had made some collectors suspicious, envious, or simply confused. So when rumors circulated about how he’d acquired marquee items, many felt vindicated in their contempt — while others thought he’d been smeared by a community aching for a reason to turn against him. 

“Hands down, right now, he’s got the largest [Thurston] collection on the planet,” says one former friend. But after years of allegations, lawsuits, and burned bridges, that collection — and its mysterious collector — have all but vanished from the world of magic.

‘Ill-Gotten Gains’

Bill Self had met Howard Thurston. In April 1935, at the age of 13, Self won a contest to perform a trick onstage with Thurston in Dayton, Ohio. And he was instantly smitten by Thurston’s charming assistant: his 25-year-old stepdaughter, Jane.

Self became a Hollywood TV executive who collected Thurston memorabilia. In the 1980s, he was among the first to dig through the Wisconsin barn stuffed with the remnants of Thurston’s Wonder Show. Of all of the treasures he owned, Self’s most prized was arguably Thurston’s wand. One of only two ever made, its ends were carved to depict the silhouettes of both Thurston and Harry Kellar, the preeminent magician whose show Thurston took over in 1908. Self prized the wand in part because he’d been given it by Jane Thurston herself, who Self had befriended before her death in 1994. 

Self died in November 2010, not long after recounting his moment onstage with ­Thurston in Feldman’s documentary, When Thurston Came to Town. Nearly five years later, members of a private social network for magic collectors known as the Thayer Magic forum heard a shocking allegation: Before Self died, his Thurston wand had mysteriously vanished.

For 15 years, former advertising executive Phil Schwartz was the Thayer Magic forum’s self-appointed referee, curating news for hundreds of members. “We’re incredible gossips,” Schwartz says. “We may be mostly men, but we just chatter all the time.”

Over the years, Schwartz heard enough about shady dealers and aggressive collectors that he added a topic to the forum: “Ill-Gotten Gains.” He encouraged magicians to discuss the stories that had previously only been swapped in whispers, so long as nobody attached names or made personal attacks. “My mission is to tell other collectors what goes on so they’ll be careful,” Schwartz says.

Future collector Bill Self with magician Thurston

In August 2015, Schwartz relayed on the forum that several magicians, including “a Thurston collector from New York,” had visited Self in the year before he died. “Shortly after the collector visited,” Schwartz continued, “Self discovered that the wand was missing, as well as some other things.” According to Schwartz, the wand was later spotted in the New Yorker’s collection, along with a letter attesting it had come from magic collector Don Hinz, who owned the contents of the Thurston barn in Wisconsin and died in 2011.

The New York collector went unnamed, but Schwartz’s readers made a guess: Rory Feldman. Members of Self’s family interviewed by Rolling Stone claim that, to their knowledge, Self never gave anything to Feldman and that Self became distraught when he realized the wand was missing. “The wand was there when Rory came, and it was gone when he left,” one family member says.

In a deposition nearly a decade later, Feldman acknowledged he had the wand and swore he had come into it honestly. Before Self died, he said, Self wrapped the wand in a pillowcase and sent it to Hinz — possibly to return the wand to Thurston’s granddaughter — and then forgot. Feldman said he bought the wand from Hinz’s widow, Margaret.

In fact, Feldman said, Self had been so impressed with Feldman’s dedication that he’d once promised Feldman his entire Thurston collection. Feldman later prepared a 436-page affidavit — obtained by Rolling Stone — that includes photographs and notarized statements from Margaret Hinz attesting that Feldman bought the wand and other memorabilia from her between October 2011 and February 2012. (Margaret Hinz did not respond to requests for comment.)

Back in 2015, Schwartz’s post set off a firestorm within the Thayer Magic forum. Among the commenters was an octogenarian collector from Cincinnati. “I could probably take a good guess about the WAND,” wrote Ken Klosterman, the man who had inspired Feldman to take up magic collecting in the first place. “But you guys figure it out.”

Questions About a Prized Trick

In all forms of collecting, there’s a pride in outmaneuvering competitors, or fleecing a seller who doesn’t know what they have — a sleight of hand in which the savviest comes out on top. Feldman is hardly the only magic collector accused of practicing these dark arts. In the 1970s, a brash New Yorker named Mario Carrandi turned magic collecting into big business by skimming obituaries in magic magazines and firing off letters to the widows, offering to assess or buy their late husbands’ collections. “It was unbelievable,” Carrandi says today, from retirement in Florida. “They’d sell it for $15.”

Other members of magic collecting’s old guard were accused of skulduggery, too: lowballing sellers who didn’t know better, or selling or buying items rumored to have been stolen. “The world of collecting is frequently a greedy place,” says Fajuri, the auctioneer. “You could put it in the seven sins.”

But even by these swashbuckling ethical standards, a few magic collectors grew skeptical of Feldman by the mid-2000s, after he sought refunds on some antique purchases he said hadn’t arrived in the mail. Soon, another incident sowed further suspicion.

Donald McCarthy was a public-school administrator in Akron, Ohio, and part-time magician who bought a Thurston illusion called the Swords of Damocles from Don Hinz in 1989. In the illusion, a woman is squeezed into a small cabinet and then seemingly run through by 11 swords. The cabinet is then opened, revealing the woman has vanished, only for her to reappear after the door is shut and the swords removed. McCarthy performed the Swords of Damocles with his granddaughter all around Akron. Other collectors marveled at the piece. Once, he told his son, David Copperfield tried to buy it.

Rory Feldman marveled at it, too.

In February 2009, Feldman called Mc­­Carthy with questions about Thurston. The two talked on the phone for three hours straight. The next day, McCarthy wrote an effusive handwritten letter to Feldman, signed “Don McCarthy.” When Feldman visited McCarthy in August 2009, McCarthy showed him the Swords of Damocles.

McCarthy died of brain cancer in September 2010 at the age of 77. His estate was valued at about $30,000: a 2005 Honda Odyssey, $100 in cash, and hundreds of magic collectibles, the most valuable by far being the Swords of Damocles. Nine months later, as McCarthy’s children were working their way through probate, Feldman filed a claim against McCarthy’s estate.

As Feldman told it, McCarthy had agreed during the 2009 visit to sell him the Swords of Damocles and other props for $4,805. As evidence, Feldman submitted two agreements, each signed with a similar-looking “Don McCarthy,” as well as bank records showing a cashed check from Feldman for $805. The remaining $4,000, Feldman said, had been paid to McCarthy in cash.

These claims weren’t news to the Mc­­Carthy children: Feldman had been messaging McCarthy’s son Patrick and his siblings on Facebook for months. In one long missive, Feldman wrote that McCarthy had told him he was “the right person for these items,” adding that “I truly loved your dad and will greatly miss him.”

But McCarthy’s children had reason to pause. After Feldman left back in August 2009, Patrick says, his father frantically called him. Two of the swords from the Swords of Damocles had gone missing, he said. So had a letter from Thurston to his wife, and dozens of Thurston’s playing cards.

At Patrick’s urging, McCarthy called the Akron police. In the resulting police report, the officer noted Feldman had allegedly “made the listed items disappear.” Patrick says his father begged him to get the items back. But Feldman went on his way, and no charges appear to have been filed.

After two years of trying to reach Feldman, he finally agreed to tell his side of the story over several hourslong calls this spring. He was charming, convincing, and eager to share hundreds of pages of documents and hours of recorded phone calls and voicemails to back up his accounts. But as with any good magic trick, it’s not always easy to figure out what exactly you’re looking at: Feldman and his critics accuse one another of making things up, lying in legal filings, and faking documents.

Feldman had a mountain of evidence laying claim to some of magic’s greatest treasures. What he lacked was anyone willing to back up his full version of events — his allies were forgetful, unwilling to take a stand publicly, or had died in the intervening years.

Of the McCarthy interaction, Feldman says neither he nor his lawyers had ever heard of the police report and speculates that it, too, had been faked. That’s because, he says, McCarthy proceeded with the sale of the items by asking him in an August 2009 voicemail — which we reviewed — to reissue the $805 check, as McCarthy had lost it. 

Patrick, a lawyer, considered Feldman’s contracts to be “bullshit,” as to his mind, his father never signed documents as “Don” — always “Donald.” Three forensic handwriting experts contacted by Rolling Stone said the agreements’ signatures raised concerns, with one specifying that one of the signatures appeared to be traced. (Feldman notes that he owns four books belonging to the elder collector with “Don McCarthy” inscribed inside.)

Patrick and his siblings rejected Feldman’s claim on technical grounds, but Feldman continued to fight. By this point, McCarthy had been dead for nearly two years, and the family had been unable to close his estate.

In September 2012, Feldman’s attorney announced a settlement. The McCarthys would sell the illusion and other Thurston collectibles to Feldman for $20,000. Patrick drove the Swords of Damocles to a parking lot where an intermediary oversaw the transaction. He sat in a Wendy’s across the street to glimpse the man he believed had preyed on his father’s love of magic, a love that ran so deep, McCarthy insisted on doing shows while battling brain cancer, despite the Frankenstein’s-monster-like scar on his head.

“It really embarrassed my father beyond words that he entrusted this guy, and the guy stole from him,” Patrick says. “It just broke his entire spirit that he had gotten taken advantage of like that.”

Feldman displayed the Swords of Damocles at a collector convention that November. By the following March, it had taken up residence in his Brooklyn apartment.

Antique or Fakes?

Thurston’s granddaughter Laurie Lynn once visited Feldman in Brooklyn. It was surreal to walk into a stranger’s house and see her family’s faces peer back from the walls. For the most part, she had a dim view of collectors. When her mother, Jane, died in 1994, she got calls from people requesting family heirlooms. “It’s like ambulance chasing,” she says now, of collecting. At least one big-name collector who had borrowed posters and letters from her mother never returned them. Feldman, so far as she knew, hadn’t done any of those things, nor did he ask for anything when she visited. Instead, he made Lynn copies of family photographs she’d never seen before. She left with the feeling that what he wanted most was to show her his collection.

Joanna Ebenstein got the same impression. She hadn’t heard the rumors about Feldman when she toured his collection in 2015. She thought he was charming — and had the kinds of artifacts she hoped to exhibit.

Ebenstein had recently opened the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, to showcase the world’s mysteries. After meeting Feldman through an acquaintance, she realized his collection would be perfect for an exhibit. Several months later, in April 2015, the museum opened “Do the Spirits Return?,” an exhibit on early 20th-century stage magic heavily based on Feldman’s collection. Posters and pictures of all sizes hung on the walls. The Swords of Damocles sat along one wall. 

Soon after the exhibit’s opening, Ebenstein noticed something strange in one of the supposedly vintage framed items: a pattern of dots indicative of digital printing. Her colleague agreed with her assessment. As the two moved through the exhibit, they counted some 10 pieces — of more than 70 — they believed to be modern reproductions. 

A poster advertising a show by Thurston, who was an icon in the early 1900s Apic/Bridgeman/Getty Images

As Ebenstein now recalls, when she confronted Feldman, he was friendly but defensive and claimed the modern additions had been restorations. The exhibit was supposed to run until January, but in an emergency meeting, the museum’s board voted to shutter it on July 12. Ebenstein’s determinations — and Feldman’s explanations — have never been independently evaluated. Feldman has not staged a public exhibition since. (Feldman’s story this spring differed from Ebenstein’s recollection: He claims he’d sent the posters to his friend Tim Moore to be copied for souvenirs, only for Moore to keep the originals for himself and send duplicates to Feldman’s framer. Moore, for his part, claims the original posters were really his, and that he had sent copies to Feldman, who knowingly framed them for the exhibit.)

Over time, Ebenstein came to feel a twitch of delight at the whole affair. She’d set out to do an exhibit on deception, and in the process, believed she had been deceived. “I think he was looking at this as an opportunity to become the preeminent Thurston collector,” Ebenstein says. “If it meant budging a few things to make his collection look as good as possible, that’s what he was going to do.”

Another thing stuck with Ebenstein. Amid the tumult over whether to cut the exhibit short, Feldman had sent an urgent message to museum staff: An erratic dentist by the name of Tim Moore may come by and try to damage the artifacts on display.

The trouble with Houdini’s top hat had begun.

David Copperfield Raises Questions

Tim Moore and Rory Feldman met online in the early days of eBay. They became instant friends, with Moore growing into a kind of father figure. They roomed together at conventions, and Moore attended Feldman’s wedding.

Around April 2011, Moore began to buy pieces from Feldman’s collection, starting with Houdini’s top hat. They came with an incredible story, Feldman told Moore. In the mid-2000s, he had done a series of deals with Don Hinz, the Wisconsin dealer, for Thurston artifacts that included hundreds of other knickknacks he said once belonged to magic’s greats. Only after Hinz’s death in February 2011, Feldman says, did he finally relent to Moore’s pleas to purchase them.

Moore was thrilled by the hat, and by the cuff links, walking canes, and pins that followed. In all, Moore bought around 490 Hinz items from Feldman, nearly all with a letter of provenance signed by the then-dead Hinz. In cash and valuable magic antiques, Moore says, he gave Feldman upward of $600,000 (in court filings, Feldman claims it was less). It wasn’t long before Moore started giving tours of the magic museum above his garage.

In 2014, Moore sold some of the collection to help pay for a $400,000 upgrade to his dental practice. David Copperfield, an American collector named Dean Arnold, and a British collector bought more than $150,000 worth of items. Moore opened a bottle of champagne and decided to sell more.

As Moore’s collection came onto the market, doubts spread. Jim Steinmeyer, the magic historian, recalls a friend texting a picture while wearing what he said was legendary magician Harry Kellar’s top hat. No way did that hat belong to Kellar, Steinmeyer fired back: Kellar had a famously huge head. When Arnold took two pocket watches he’d purchased for repair, he discovered one watch’s movement was made years after the magician who supposedly owned it had died. The other was sold almost exclusively in the U.S. — although allegedly owned by a magician known for never leaving England. 

Moore soon received an inquiry from Copperfield about the pieces. Moore relayed what he had been told: They originated with two prominent magic collectors named David Price and Jay Marshall, before being acquired by Hinz and, later, Feldman.

Magic historian and collector Mike Caveney, who moonlighted as Copperfield’s archivist, emailed Price’s son to ask if his father had ever owned those items, including Houdini’s top hat. “An easy one,” Price’s son replied. “We never had any of those items; in fact, I’ve never heard of them.” Auctioneer Gabe Fajuri was also convinced they were fakes. He had spent six months organizing and appraising Marshall’s estate and was certain Marshall never owned them. 

On May 28, 2015, Phil Schwartz cryptically posted on the Thayer Magic forum that “it appears as though a major fraud (or multiple frauds) has been perpetuated against magic collector(s).” That same day, he canceled Feldman’s membership; in the months that followed, Schwartz posted the Bill Self allegations that referenced the “young Thurston collector from New York.” Schwartz soon received a letter from a Brooklyn attorney who insisted Schwartz retract the “salacious false” posts about his client, Feldman.

Had Feldman been duped himself, or — as some collectors darkly suggested — had he passed off flea-market finds as genuine artifacts? When we talked to Feldman this spring, he had a simple explanation. When he bought the items from Hinz, he says, he was so leery of their origins that he insisted Hinz provide signed letters of provenance, which he helped Hinz type up. Feldman produced an affidavit from Hinz’s widow, who said her late husband had signed all of those letters of provenance and that the items really had belonged to him. Where had Hinz gotten them? Feldman doesn’t know.

A top hat purportedly owned by Houdini

Moore understood the items’ provenance was shaky when he bought them, Feldman says, and they agreed on prices reflecting that. But things went off the rails once Moore started “telling people he has access to the Fort Knox of magic,” and flipping the antiques for prices that demanded provenances far better than what Hinz had offered. “I know all of the Hinz letters are conjecture,” reads a letter Feldman says Moore sent to him in 2013. “I know these items aren’t truly real, but they are great for displays! I want the rest.” (Moore claims the letter was “fraudulently written” on his stolen office stationery by Feldman.)

Feldman wasn’t the only one who questioned how Moore represented the items he was selling. “Tim has tried to present himself as the victim,” says Dean Arnold, who purchased the watches from Moore and was eventually repaid after threatening to take out an unflattering ad in the local paper. “But the way he behaved, I don’t think, was any better than Rory.”

In March 2016, Moore sued Feldman in federal court for approximately $1 million, plus additional damages and attorneys’ fees, accusing him of fraud over the Hinz items. Feldman promptly claimed that Moore threatened him into turning over more than $100,000 in cash and collectibles to reimburse Copperfield (which Moore denies). 

After nearly a year of litigation, the men got into a heated exchange on the phone over which of their secrets would be revealed publicly in a trial. “It’s kind of like the mutual assured destruction of the Cold War,” Moore says to Feldman in a recording acquired by Rolling Stone. A few minutes later, Feldman fires back: “I want you to understand that what I have against you is a fucking arsenal. It’s a nuclear bomb.” Moore and Feldman settled for about $350,000 five months later. (Moore says he doesn’t remember this call.)

The incident left a gaping wound in the collecting community. Fajuri recalls seeing Moore soon afterward at a bar near Chicago, nearly in tears. Feldman says he has PTSD from the blowup more than a decade later. Moore and Feldman — once like father and son — have not spoken since.

Amid these muddied waters, it confirmed for some suspicions about Feldman, while others believed he was the victim of a witch hunt. “Collectors thought they’d drive him out of the business,” Steinmeyer says. 

But Feldman showed no signs of stopping. “He’s kind of like a shark,” Steinmeyer adds. “He’s always moving.”

Magic on Trial

When Ken Klosterman died at age 87 in October 2020, he left behind three children, three grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter. He also left behind the prized collection Feldman had fawned over as a boy. 

For decades, Klosterman ran the Klosterman Baking Co., founded by his grandfather in the 1890s. During his tenure, the bakery became a supplier to McDonald’s, landing him in the Baking Hall of Fame. But what he loved above all was magic. 

In the 1970s, Klosterman was on a trip to Chicago when he stumbled into a collectors’ convention and caught the bug. What started in Klosterman’s attic grew into a collection of more than 60,000 pieces, housed across two properties on the outskirts of Cincinnati. The Salon de Magie “was like Camelot for magic,” recalls Steve Faris, one of the collection’s curators. “And there will never be another.”

Klosterman grew animated when he talked about his collection, but he had a dark sense of humor about it, too. He often called himself and his peers “vultures”; when he occasionally organized the “Vultures Convention” for collectors in Cincinnati, the event’s logo was a dour-looking bird perched on a crooked branch. In his later years, he’d complain to friends that the vultures were coming for him. 

Toward the end of his life, in May 2018, Klosterman invited Gabe Fajuri to Cincinnati to sign a contract for Fajuri’s auction house to sell off the Salon de Magie after his death.

In October 2021, about a year after ­Klosterman’s passing, 365 lots went on the block. The most valuable, Robert-Houdin’s magical chest, sold for $156,000. But as soon as the auction was announced, 19 lots were pulled. Three months earlier, Feldman had filed suit against the Klostermans, claiming that ­Klosterman had granted him ownership of the Salon de Magie’s Thurston items in 2014, in a deal that could be disclosed only after Klosterman’s death. Ever since, a small fortune in legal fees has been spent to determine what exactly transpired between the two vultures.

Feldman’s story, laid out in court filings, goes like this. He and Klosterman were kindred spirits, born nearly 50 years apart with the same collecting affliction. The two started talking by phone in the mid-1990s, when Feldman was still a teenager; later, they each visited the other’s collections and became friends. Over the years, Feldman occasionally brought up the idea of Klosterman giving or selling Feldman his Thurston collection.

Ken Klosterman was an avid collector.

To Jim Steinmeyer, at least, the two collections seemed to belong together. When he had visited Feldman’s apartment in June 2009 to research a biography on Thurston, Steinmeyer found one of the most organized private collections he’d ever seen. Feldman could almost instantly locate any record that Steinmeyer requested, down to the smallest scrap of paper. “It was like a group of researchers were running around,” Steinmeyer now recalls. “But they weren’t — it was him.”

In some cases, due to the haphazard way they’d been sold, Feldman had the other halves of letters and manuscripts housed in the Salon de Magie. Steinmeyer recalls that over one dinner with Klosterman, he relayed how much Feldman’s collection had impressed him. Klosterman replied, referring to the fate of his own collection, “I think I’m going to ask him to put together a proposal,” with a grandfatherly wink.

During a visit to the Salon de Magie with Tim Moore in 2014, Feldman says he once again floated the idea of buying Klosterman’s Thurston memorabilia. Finally, he claims, Klosterman was willing to play ball. At a local restaurant, the two of them hashed out a handwritten set of draft terms, Feldman says — Klosterman annotating it in a shaky hand — and then Klosterman sent Feldman off to finalize the proposal. (Moore doesn’t recall the sale being discussed at dinner.) Feldman reached back out to Steinmeyer to bat around ideas.

Three weeks later, Feldman mailed his final proposal to Klosterman. Feldman would receive 63 lots in all — including 30 albums, two scrapbooks, and Thurston’s “trunk of mystery” — for a total of $1,000. Out of respect, Feldman would wait at least four months after Klosterman’s death before contacting his family to retrieve the items.

At Klosterman’s June 2014 Vultures Convention, Feldman claims, he met up with Klosterman and a group including Moore inside the Salon de Magie, where Klosterman was waiting with the agreements Feldman had sent over three months earlier, as well as a handwritten addendum written in flowery cursive. Klosterman quickly signed off on the agreement, with Moore and another collector, Pat Colby, signing on as witnesses. Feldman says that as word trickled out about the deal, he received congratulatory emails and voicemails.

Kim Klosterman, Ken’s daughter, tells the story differently. Her father had prepared for the day when he would no longer oversee the Salon de Magie, creating a family trust in 2005 to which he later assigned his collection. They discussed his wishes for his collection constantly, she says, and before gifting or selling a piece, he always ran it by her first. On May 25, 2014 — less than two weeks before he allegedly signed the Feldman agreement — Klosterman emailed his children and told them that they should sell his collections upon his death. In March 2018, Klosterman confirmed to his family that “all items will be ‘auctioned off.’”

Some in Klosterman’s orbit knew how badly Feldman wanted his Thurston collection, but they had never heard of a deal between the two. Kim says she hadn’t. Curator Steve Faris also says he hadn’t, though he claims Feldman once offered him $5,000 to persuade Klosterman to sell his Thurston scrapbooks (which Feldman denies).

In an affidavit, Moore says he never signed the 2014 agreement. The other purported witness, Colby, said in an affidavit it was his signature, but he later said in a deposition he couldn’t recall what he signed.

And then there was the email Klosterman had sent to his curator, Richard Hughes, five days after allegedly receiving Feldman’s proposal, describing Feldman as “very secretive,” and adding: “I wonder who he has conned.” In another, to David Copperfield on May 21, 2015, nearly a year after the agreement was purportedly signed, Klosterman wrote while sending an article quoting Feldman: “I don’t know about this guy. I’m glad I avoided him most of the time.”

How could Klosterman do a deal with Feldman one day and then dismiss him the next? Despite their mutual adoration for Thurston, the two collectors were from different worlds: Something both Feldman and Colby floated to explain Klosterman keeping the deal private. Klosterman was a Trump-supporting multimillionaire from Ohio. Feldman was a liberal Jewish Brooklynite five decades his junior. Did the social chasm become a growing source of tension — even embarrassment — for Klosterman?

“IfI [sic] would have stood up infront of eve l ybody [sic] and presented you with my thurston collection I would have been beheaded,” Klosterman wrote in a March 4, 2019, email to Feldman that Feldman later submitted as evidence. “I have to keep our agreement private.”

The Klosterman family claimed no agreement could have possibly been reached, but Feldman produced affidavits from people saying Klosterman had hinted at aspects of the plan before his death. One, magician John Bloom, says that at a May 2014 auction he and his wife attended with Klosterman, the elder collector “spoke in a clear and precise manner that Rory was going to be getting his Thurston collection.” Another, Gretchen Rock, is the daughter of the late magician Will Rock, who had toured with Thurston’s illusions in the 1930s and the 1940s. Around 2008, she had sold Klosterman many of her father’s things with a promise he’d keep the collection intact. Rock heard about the Feldman-Klosterman deal from Feldman, and she felt the agreement fulfilled Klosterman’s promise to her. 

But during the court case, Feldman proffered no original versions of the agreements he had with Klosterman — in fact, most of the some 7,000 documents he produced as evidence had been printed out, photographed, or scanned. Feldman said he’d mailed that consequential June 2014 agreement back to Klosterman at Klosterman’s request, only for the documents to disappear. Kim suspected Feldman was forging signatures and conjuring evidence out of thin air; her digital forensics expert later claimed some files’ metadata bore signs of recent creation. Feldman in turn called his own expert, who vouched for many of the files’ authenticity. Feldman’s computer could not be examined to settle the matter. Two years into the lawsuit, he said, it was accidentally thrown out during a renovation project at his house. Nathan Truitt, Kim’s attorney, later described preparing for the trial as “like playing Whac-A-Mole.”

Kim felt she was experiencing a magic trick come to life. “This whole concept of smoke and mirrors is nothing new,” she says. “He was just using … the magicians’ playbook.”

From 2021 to 2025, the trial was repeatedly rescheduled: first when new evidence came to light, then when Feldman’s health faltered. Magicians and collectors submitted affidavits and prepared to be called as witnesses, largely for the Klostermans. Would it be the culmination of decades of allegations — or Feldman’s vindication?

In October 2025, that question nearly had its moment in a Cincinnati courtroom. But days before the fifth scheduled trial date, Feldman reported that severe chronic vertigo made it necessary to reschedule. The judge declined. Four days before the Monday morning trial, the two lawyers hammered out a deal: Both sides would drop their claims, no money would change hands, and the case would be dismissed with prejudice. The biggest trial in magic-collecting history ended before it began, and the Klosterman trust could auction off the memorabilia.

That ending was not at all what Feldman wanted. A few weeks later, he appealed the dismissal. Now representing himself, Feldman alleged his former lawyer entered the deal without his consent while Feldman sought medical treatment.

To Feldman, this setback is the latest in a long line of indignities. He believes he was made a pariah simply because he outfoxed, and therefore threatened, magic’s most powerful collectors, including David Copperfield. Other collectors, he claims, are so terrified of crossing the richest and most influential among them that they will not — cannot — take Feldman’s side. “Imagine: David Copperfield wakes up, and he has a billion dollars … and his problem in life is me,” Feldman said during his deposition. “Bizarre.” (Copperfield declined to comment.)

During three long days of depositions in February 2025, Feldman recounted and dismissed two decades of accusations. He really did acquire Klosterman’s Thurston collection. He bought Donald McCarthy’s Swords of Damocles, twice. When the authenticity of Don Hinz’s collection was questioned, he offered full refunds.

“I want this saga to be over,” Feldman tells us, “but as a winner.” To him, a handful of complaints are inevitable while acquiring what he calls his Wonder Show Museum, a collection of more than 100,000 pieces. “That would be like a 4.96 rating on Uber,” he says. “I’d be a fantastic diamond driver.” As of spring 2026, Feldman’s appeal was still working its way through the county courts. 

Of the case’s many mysteries, one was left unaddressed in court filings: Who authored a handwritten agreement Feldman claims he received during the June 2014 deal signing with Klosterman? The document states Feldman was now the Thurston items’ owner but would loan the items back to Klosterman until his death. Feldman claims Klosterman gave it to him as an addendum to the deal they signed, but says he isn’t sure who wrote it.

According to Kim Klosterman’s April 2025 pretrial statement, her father’s longtime personal assistant, Glenna Hiles, planned to testify that Klosterman had never told her about any agreement with Feldman. But Hiles’ signatures on deeds and mortgages obtained by Rolling Stone, spanning from 1997 to 2020, resemble the flowery cursive of that mysterious handwritten letter. If Hiles wrote that letter, she didn’t merely know about the agreement between Feldman and Klosterman — she may have helped execute it. 

We asked three certified forensic examiners to review the documents. Sheila Lowe, the president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, said, “Regarding the ‘letter,’ the top and middle writing is Glenna’s.” The next, Grace Warmbier, said the comparison to Hiles’ handwriting was inconclusive, but added that the note was “probably not written” by Feldman. A third, Bart Baggett, also could not determine the author, but noted that Klosterman’s signature looked to him “non-authentic” — meaning he believes someone other than Klosterman may have signed his name.

Hiles, who still works for the Klosterman family, says that while the note’s handwriting does look like hers, she did not write it. Kim Klosterman’s attorney, Nathan Truitt, noted that the handwriting couldn’t be properly analyzed because the original document had seemingly vanished.

Feldman shows off some of his extensive collection of Thurston memorabilia. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times/Redux

The Vanishing Act

Feldman, who’s now 45, lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter. He posts pictures from his collection on social media but no longer goes to magic conventions. Magicians say he continues to build a spectacular ­collection, though few have seen it in the past decade. “Think about how that works on a psychological level,” Fajuri says. “You’ve got to have that stuff so badly and you have no one to share it with … It’s like Rosebud up on the wall.”

Many in the magic community have stopped speculating about Feldman’s money or motives, but they do wonder what will happen to his collection once he’s gone. Feldman is more focused on his lifelong goal: of creating a museum celebrating the golden age of magic, where his collection would be accessible to the public — and not for sale to the collectors seeking treasures for themselves. “I hope I don’t die any time soon,” he said in his deposition. “My entire existence is to perpetuate Thurston.”

What did Feldman see in Howard Thurston? The great magician was a self-made man, shooting from nothing to global renown. Perhaps most important, Thurston was known to be a wonderful father. Feldman’s own father had died when he was two. In Thurston, Feldman seemed to have found a replacement father figure. It was an attachment he felt he could never fully explain.

Feldman points out that his dad was also named Howard and that their birthdays were just a day (and many years) apart in April. “There are these weird things that I don’t know if I knew,” he says of the similarities.

After decades immersed in all that Thurston left behind, Feldman knows the great illusionist’s Wonder Show of the Universe wasn’t always as advertised. Some of Thurston’s props were hacked-together amalgams. Others bordered on crude. Sometimes, looking at them, he wonders how people believed what they saw on those glorious posters. “We are all kind of creating, conjuring up this fictitious version,” he says. “The poster that we are seeing in our mind’s eye, you know?”

After recent controversies, a film of distrust has settled on the magic community. During one expo, some collectors spoke of liquidating before they died, to relieve their families of the burden. In late 2025, Tim Moore sold his remaining collection to a magic venue in Chicago. It felt unexpectedly liberating.

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Not all collectors are as willing or able to free themselves. In December 2025, Fajuri stood at the lectern in his Chicago auction house. With the Feldman-Klosterman case dismissed, and the appeal attempt pending, he’d added a few Salon de Magie collectibles into his year-end auction. Of the auction’s eight Thurston items, one online bidder, number 7001, snapped up six. A pair of photos of Thurston holding a rabbit above a crowd of children was estimated to sell for $1,000. Bidder 7001 paid $4,080. In total, the anonymous bidder 7001 spent more than $35,000 on Thurston items within minutes. 

Some of those pieces will very likely end up in a house in New Jersey filled with the contents of Howard Thurston’s life. Money, reputation, and friendships had all been ­sacrificed in that pursuit. And someday, it may all be sold again. Magic collecting, as Jim Steinmeyer had described it, could be both wonderfully poetic and tragic at the same time. “This stuff,” he said, “is worthless — and priceless.”