mountsville west virginia. >>> one of the things you might not have known about our late colleague bob mackenzie is that he was an amateur magician. he admired and enjoyed others that practiced the misdirection and slight of hand. bob got together with magicians and talked about the advocation they loved. >> reporter: these hands belong to a bay area surgeon. he's known as a collector and historian. he began collecting the magic equipment at 10 years old. almost all of it hand crafted at the time when magic tricks were made one at a time. the collection is worth more than a million dollars right now. it numbers some 6,000 separate tricks and albo claims to be able to perform any of them. i challenged him to do good with a 19th century trick. >> when we take it off there is the ball back in the vase. and we will just take it and push the top like that. when we do that, the ball falls right out of the vase. and it does that because there's a hole. >> it goes right through the hole. >> right through the hole. >> reporter: he maintains and repairs the collection himself. he also writes books about a