# A hole that can't be un-punched > A yo-yo trick card with four circles punched through and one only ticked in biro is a permanent record of skill, and the ticked one is a claim made without a witness. August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/yo-yo-competition-card A numbered column of six trick names under `TRICK CARD`, a small circle beside each. Four circles are punched clean through. One is ticked in biro instead. A faint stamp sits at the base, half worn away. A tick can be added by anybody at any time. A hole, once it's punched, is a fact. ## What was a trick card actually for? Proof — a shop's way of turning a skill nobody else witnessed into a permanent record. A child learns a trick alone, in a bedroom or a car park, with no adult watching and no evidence left behind that it happened. The card existed to solve exactly that problem: perform it in front of somebody behind a counter, and a hole gets punched that can never be argued with again. ## Why a punch rather than a signature or a tick? Because a hole can't be added later by the person being tested. A signature or a tick can be filled in by anyone with a pen, including the card's own owner, alone, with nobody watching. A punch requires the machine and the person holding it, which in practice meant standing in front of a shop employee whose entire authority was a hole punch. That's a small amount of ceremony, and it's exactly enough to make the record trustworthy — [the same appetite for a permanent, witnessed score](/stories/high-score-table) that runs through any hand-kept table. ## What's the actual choice in printing one of these? How many circles are actually punched, and whether to include the one that only got a tick. A card with every hole punched is a completed set — a portrait of somebody who finished. A card with a gap, or with that one suspicious tick standing in for a hole nobody witnessed, is a portrait of somebody mid-way through, which is a truer picture of how most of these actually ended up in a drawer. ## Can this use a real shop's card and real trick names? The specific list, its order, and the shop's own stamp are somebody's — invent all three and lose nothing. Established yo-yo brands have run genuine numbered trick programmes for years, complete with their own stamped cards, and that sequence and its branding belong to whoever built it. An invented shop and an invented set of six trick names, in whatever order feels earned, does the same emotional job — proof of a specific skill, witnessed by a specific counter — without borrowing anyone's actual certification scheme. It also travels better: nobody needs to have owned the same brand of yo-yo to recognise the card. ## Does the format work for a skill that isn't yo-yo? Yes — anything learned as a fixed, escalating list: skateboard tricks, swimming badges, knots, magic tricks off the back of a box. The card doesn't care what the six things are, just that they're difficult in a rising order and that completing them means something to whoever's counting. It's a fair gift for somebody partway through learning anything like that, punched exactly as far as they've actually got. ## Isn't printing the ticked circle just printing a cheat? Not really — it's printing the only trick learned without anyone else there to confirm it, which is a more honest object than a card with every hole clean. A fully punched card says everything went by the book. A card with one tick standing in for a hole says something closer to the truth about how these actually got finished — alone, in a garden, with no shop nearby, and a decision made to mark it as done anyway. That's not a flaw in the record. It's the most personal thing on the card. ## Does it print well? Yes — a punched card is already reduced to shapes and small type, close to ideal print artwork. Royal blue or a similarly saturated ground suits the card's own printed stock, with the trick list kept as plain numbered type rather than redrawn as decorative lettering — [the plainness itself is what makes it read as a real card](/stories/composition-for-a-chest-print) rather than an invented graphic. Two inks carry it: one for the card's outline, rule lines and text, one for the punched holes themselves, which need to show as the true garment colour showing through rather than a printed grey circle, or the whole joke of a punched hole stops making sense. ## How do I get one made? Describe the card at [JustOG](/) — the six tricks in order, which ones are actually punched, and whether the last one only gets a tick. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). Four holes let the light through. The fifth trick just has ink on it.