This routine would rack done at the right moment. Do some card tricks get the spectators use to you then Switch and end with this. In performance you showing part of the deck would be gone unnoticed, do to your patter I'm sure. This trick doesn't play well on camera and with out patter its even worst....lol
Cosmicplay spent more time saying what led me to say what I did say. What I didn't say was when you showed the deck to be "a normal deck" I had a "wait a minute" moment, which was wondering why you stoped about 1/4 of the way through. This was what sent a red flag up for me. I guess my comment was bull in the china shopish, but I have to agree that the effect happened to abruptly. I llike the premise of doing the cuts and shuffles to work the magic into the routine.
I would agree there is nothing wrong with a gimmicked deck or gimmicks in general. As my teacher would say 'a magician who refuses to use gimmicks is like a pianist who refuses to use his left hand.' />However, as any method in magic has a weakness, the weakness of this gimmick is that it is not examinable. This would not be a problem if there would not be any heat on the deck, as with invisible deck. At the end of invisible deck, if there is any heat it would rather lie on the selected card. Here, howeve, my bet is that many laypeople will question the deck. In fact, laypeople question the deck when I do a sleight of hand triumph. And at such moment of heat, a switch will be very difficult to sell. I would say 2 things if you want to stick to this effect: - precede it with regular deck effects in which they get to examine and handle the cards. - do something to this trick to make it less obvious. This is too impossible. And when things get too impossible they will ask the wrong questions. I would add a few cuts and shuffles. Check out Alexander de Cova. He had a nice version on one of his dvds using the same principle, in which it almost looked like sleight of hand, but then it wasn't! />Finally, this needs a magic gesture that tells them "now.... the magic is happening..." You pick up what appears to be a pen, but don't seem to wave it or so, and you immediately proceed spreading the cards. I would build up that moment, and add a magic gesture.
That's what deck switches are for, my friend. By that opinon of yours we should disregard, the invisible deck, the mental photography deck and son on, as well as most packet tricks. Thanks for your comment.
Obviously a trick you cannot do with a given deck. What do you do as a follow on after this? Seems to me you wouldn't do another card trick, with this deck anyway.
