VOID if scratched

As baseball card loving kids, my brother and I reveled in a Topps competition involving scratch-off cards. In every pack of cards was a competition card, where first, second and third base were scratch off areas, and underneath one of them was a winning run. Cards with only winning runs scratched off could then be redeemed for prizes. Our investigative instincts led us to find that if we took the cards into a dark room and illuminated the backs of them with a flashlight, we could determine where the winning runs were located without scratching off any of the boxes. In this way, we accumulated large numbers of winning cards. Topps caught on to the flashlight trick and began reinforcing the scratch-off material to foil any attempt at cheating the game. But since we were avid collectors and enjoyed competition, we had already amassed enough winning cards to trade them in for cool prizes. Our efforts were in vain though, for our young minds were outsmarted by those of Topps’ marketing department. On each competition card was a small scratch off box in the lower left hand corner with the words, ‘VOID if scratched’ next to it. We didn’t know what 'VOID' meant, and we were eager to scratch. All of our winning cards were void and we received no prizes from Topps.