At Violent Gentlemen, we pay attention to detail. Every order is carefully packaged by hand by one of our associates. If you’ve ordered from us in the past, then you already know how each parcel includes a tag that notes who bundled your purchase, along with a hockey card and a packet of candy.
What you may not know is that, when our guys like Hunter or Chewey assemble your order, they are not pulling these hockey cards at random. Rather, they are carrying out a meticulous process that is often painstakingly difficult. The hockey card you receive is based on the sequence of your mailing code and how it relates to our secret algorithm at Violent Gentlemen. Typically, we like to keep this process under wraps, but in the interests of helping our customers better understand our inner workings, we’ve decided to crack open the vault.
In the United States, zip codes have five digits. When you order from us, we take your state’s zip code to determine which hockey card you’ll receive. The first two digits represent the year of an NHL season, the next two signify how a player ranked in penalty minutes during that campaign, and the final number is used as a tiebreaker. Confused? Don’t worry, here’s how it breaks down.
If you’re from Farwell in Clare County, Michigan, your zip code is 48622. Right off the bat, our packager knows to head into the archives and pull the statistical records from the 1947-48 NHL season. From there, they’ll be zeroing in on who racked up the 62nd most penalty minutes from that season. In this case, it would be Norman “Bud” Poile, who compiled 17 penalty minutes while splitting time with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Chicago Black Hawks that year. But wait, Detroit’s Bill Quackenbush also had 17 penalty minutes that season, which means our packager needs to invoke the tiebreaker number. Since the final digit in the Farwell zip code is two, we have to divide each player’s total points by that amount. Whoever still has the higher number is the winner. During the 1947-48 season, Poile amassed 54 points, while Quackenbush only managed 22. Poile’s divided point output supersedes that of his Red Wings’ colleague, and now our Violent Gentlemen associate now knows which card to include in the order to Farwell, Michigan.
From there, they’d head into our vast hockey card repository, only to realize that a 1947-48 Bud Poile Maple Leafs card is incredibly rare. As they thumb through our collector’s guide, panic grips their chest as they realize this card, in mint condition, is worth thousands of dollars. Knowing that we couldn’t possibly part with something this valuable, they randomly grab a card out of the box of 2005-06 Upper Deck we keep in the warehouse and stuff it into your package. And, that’s how we determine which hockey card to include in every order.
Tune in again next time for more behind the scenes at Violent Gentlemen.