For over seven years, the side of the Deck Around box has boldly claimed it contains:

4 mini pencils we stole at a municipal golf course.

This was, originally, what’s known in my industry as “irreverent snappy copy." AKA, a joke.

But like all great jokes – NFTs, the Cybertruck, adult coloring books – it eventually became terrifyingly real.

Here’s the deal:

I’m almost out of Deck Around. Like, 33 boxes left. That’s 33 final boxes worth of hand-packed party game nonsense. That you must buy ASAP.

But there was a problem.

I was 16 mini pencils short. And you cannot just buy 16 mini pencils. Oh no. You can only buy them in post-apocalyptic hoarding prepper quantities like 1000 at a time. Apparently, golf courses are mini pencil black holes. Who knew?

So, faced with a choice between (A) buying a pencil warehouse or (B) living up to my own packaging copy, I chose… felony theft.

A heist rivaled only by that thing at the Louvre.

Easy now. Technically, those pencils are out there for registered golfers. They’re free. They’re just sitting there. It’s a pencil buffet. And yes, I do play there a lot. But are they meant for packaging up a party game that I’m quietly sunsetting?

Unclear.

Probably not.

The point is: 4 of the final copies of Deck Around now contain actual, golf pencils “physically taken” from a golf course.

That’s right. This time, the box wasn’t joking.

So if you want to own a piece of victimless crime history—and honestly, you do—go buy a copy. Maybe you’ll get one of the final four boxes and you too can become complicit.

Don’t think of it as stealing. Think of it as… artisanal sourcing.