What is this deck for?

[Tom McDonagh]

I was stacking a deck (Osterlind)I had lying around and found it wasn't quite right. I sorted the cards and it contains black odd, red even in pairs. Two AS, two 3S etc. What is it? Did I buy it or set it up for something?
Tom McDonagh

[John Bowden]

It may well be a Mene Tekel Deck and if so it is capable of Minor Miracles.
There is a very good section on its use in Encyclopaedia of Card Tricks.......by Jean Hugard where you will find nine of these miracles. As this deck is seldom used today you may actually fool some of your fellow club members with the routines contained in the book. Nathan Kranzo has a DVD out which comes with a Mene Tekel Deck which is excellent in that he added something "extra" and what was Minor, now becomes Major.
This DVD can be bought from Vanishing Magic http://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magici ... an-Kranzo/
and also from Nathan's site http://kranzomagic.myshopify.com/collec ... racles-dvd

Hope this is of some use to you.
Cheers from the Emerald Isle of Ireland,
John Bowden

[Max Maven]

In a Mene-Tekel Deck, one of each pair of duplicates is trimmed short. What you describe is more likely one of the two decks used for Bill McCaffery's "The Prize Winner" (see Greater Magic), more often incorrectly attributed to Eddie Joseph who marketed it as "Premonition."

[Tom McDonagh]

You are right Max Maven, it's half of Premonition. Something I set up a long time ago and never used.
Thank you, Tom