Now, there's an interesting question! If the current writer hadn't worked many years ago on a documentary series for TLC about magic and magicians (which, as an aside, included the first instance ever of Teller actually speaking on camera), we might not have known the background to this story: We're guessing that little did you know that you've stumbled upon something of a hot potato in the magic world.
The core contents of the collection that David Copperfield keeps as his private museum in Las Vegas constitutes the amassed magical treasures of a magician named John Mulholland, who was not only a renowned performer, but also an historian of magic and a close friend of Harry Houdini. An avid and highly respected collector, by the time of his death in 1970, Mulholland had become the proud custodian of some ten thousand printed volumes (in 20 languages) chronicling the history of magic and illusion, including an original 1584 volume of the "Discoverie of Witchcraft," which is considered to be the first published how-to magic book, written to expose charlatans who would fool the public with sleight of hand and other trickery.
Thanks to his friendship with Houdini, Mulholland inherited much of the legendary escapologist's equipment and printed materials, with other notable treasures in the collection including the rifle that tragically took the life of the performer known as Chung Ling Soo. This was the fashionably exotic stage moniker of a U.S. native who officially went by the much more prosaic name of William Ellsworth Robinson, who was known for his performance, as Soo, of the bullet-catching trick. Sadly, one tragic night in London in 1918, something went terribly wrong and the performer was fatally shot in the chest during a live stage performance. Original mechanical works by Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, the nineteenth-century watchmaker-turned-conjurer who is considered the father of modern magic, are also among some of the prized artifacts in this unique assemblage.
Up until his death, Mulholland himself curated the collection, which was housed in The Players Club on Gramercy Park in New York. In 1984, the club put it up for auction and magician and historian Ricky Jay was approached to help catalog the priceless collection and advise on its dispersal. Jay, who is passionate about the history of illusion and its exponents, feared that the collection would be broken up and/or sent overseas, but at the eleventh hour a young attorney and aspiring magician from Los Angeles named Carl Rheuban showed up unexpectedly and bought the entire lot for $575,000.
The previous year Rheuban had founded the First Network Savings Bank and the offices he'd leased in Century City became the collection's new home, with Jay living a dream come true as the new curator. He had his own administrative staff and a nice budget for new acquisitions, with plans to relocate the thousands of artifacts to a dedicated home downtown.
The dream turned out to be short-lived, however: In April 1990, First Network was closed abruptly by California banking regulators and shortly thereafter the Resolution Trust Corporation (R.T.C.) -- the federal agency created to cope with the prevailing nationwide savings-and-loan crisis -- moved in to liquidate the bank's assets, of which the Mulholland Collection turned out to be one of the rare few that had actually appreciated in value. Rheuban himself filed for personal bankruptcy and was reportedly the subject of a criminal-fraud investigation. Once again Ricky Jay, who was no longer allowed to even enter his office and found himself in some heated exchanges with the FBI when he discovered priceless items in the collection being damaged through manhandling, again feared for the worst.
While to some readers what happened next might sound like a happy ending, to Jay it was far from welcome news when David Copperfield showed up at the Mulholland sale, brandishing his fortune. While Copperfield is one of, if not the most famous magician of all time, his reputation within the magic community is mixed, whether by dint of jealousy or his personal manner (or perhaps it's just those eyebrows...) We've heard (unsubstantiated) tales of bullying tactics, for example, whereby Copperfield allegedly effectively "appropriated" illusions developed by young performers who lacked the attorney muscle to defend their creations. Like other "grand illusionists" (à la Siegfried and Roy), whose acts are highly dependent on behind-the-scenes visionaries who dream up and build the mechanisms that make the illusions possible, the talents of what are disparagingly referred to in the trade as "box magicians" are pooh-poohed by sleight-of-hand purists.
So, when Copperfield arrived at the courthouse on the appointed day, having previously agreed to pay $2,200,000 for the treaures -- a figure that precluded any other serious collector from even entering the race -- a friend of Ricky Jay's was said to have observed that, "David Copperfield buying the Mulholland Library is like an Elvis impersonator winding up with Graceland."
Be that as it may, Copperfield has ever since been the owner of a collection in which he claims to have invested "hundreds of millions of dollars" over the years. Renamed the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts, it is housed in a warehouse in Las Vegas (we know not where -- but it's probably invisible anyhow). Alas, it is not open to the public and its owner has no intention of ever making it so. "There's so much secrecy in here... Ghosts and secrets," he commented during a rare behind-the-scenes tour granted to CBS.
While it's not a public museum, Copperfield does make his collection -- which now numbers some 80,000 pieces, many of which are unique -- available to researchers, particularly in the movie industry, which is close to Copperfield's heart as he explained in the Las Vegas Sun article to which you refer:
"My inspiration from the beginning of my magic really was storytelling, and movies were my inspiration. Even though I had the museum here in Las Vegas with all of its treasures of veteran magicians, my real inspirations were Orson Welles and Frank Capra and all those great film directors.
He goes on to explain how, "Every movie that you see literally that has magic in it has used my Las Vegas museum collection as its research center. You’ve toured it. You’ve seen we have everything magic in the world in one place here. Hugh Jackman came to watch the show, came to my museum to do research for The Prestige. When art directors come to the museum, we offer access to make sure that they get it right. Even with The Illusionist, with Edward Norton, we helped them with material and guidance, and Christopher Nolan, who directed The Prestige, spent time with us...Some of the movie-makers cry when they see it all because it’s really the beginning of all of our lives, all of our professional careers, watching the magicians who began, who really started movies, and that’s the important thing; movies were really created by magicians. The idea of the cinema was a magic trick show, an illusion for storytellers to take that art form and make movies today. We owe our cinema to great magicians of the past as a piece of magic in the show."
While you may not get to see the collection in person, you can get a taste of its hidden wonders via the CBS link above, and from September 19 you can catch Copperfield himself performing in the newly renamed David Copperfield Theater (formerly the Hollywood Theater) at MGM Grand, where he's just signed a three-year contract extension and is performing a much-revamped (so we've heard) show.
