I totally get it. When I first got started, over 30 years ago, I thought card tricks were essential to a magician's repertoire. Over the years, I've slowly transitioned to more tricks with borrowed or everyday objects. I find a lot of "pick a card, any card" tricks to be boring, too.
It's not that I set out to put card tricks aside, I just started to really pay attention to what got the best reactions and the "why" of the magic. I wanted to figure out what makes people care about the trick.
If I pull out a deck of cards and have a person pick a card, then find it, so what? Most laymen think it's amazing on some level, but if it's just one card trick after the other, they can all sort of look the same.
So lately, I do more crazy tricks,
with cards instead of card tricks. I love torn and restored tricks with all sorts of items, including cards. It's great to leave the spectator with a souvenir. Brent Braun's
Torched and Restored is one of my favorites.
But I love to just borrow a dollar bill, clearly display my hands empty (no thumb tip), tear the bill into 4 pieces and then visually melt the edges back into each other as if the fibers are zipping back together! People care about money and it feels so organic.
So I've been playing up my boredom with card tricks as part of my act. It's engaging and disarming and it's fun for me again. For what it's worth, my suggestion would be to maybe just do one really powerful card trick to sort of tip the hat to card magic and then move on to other effects. You could do the
invisible deck and then just sit down.
I've been doing a few variations of Any Card at Any Number. Very powerful. Again, could be the only card trick in your act. Check it out.
I wish you all the best as you develop your style and performance preferences. Don't feel like you have to do card magic. You need to decide that for yourself.