How We Cut Stadium Benches into Stadion HK Trading Cards

How could we approach the project so that it would be genuinely interesting for collectors? Would period archive photographs even be available? Would cards covering the club’s history still appeal to collectors? Could we secure player autographs? These were the fundamental questions we considered while planning the project.

We wanted something unique – something that had never been done before

The collection includes base, parallel and autographed cards of the entire team, while the 30 Years Anniversary series also features rare Welcome to Extraliga cards capturing those memorable and highly emotional moments.

One thing was certain: we wanted to create something extra, something directly connected to Hradec Králové hockey and the ice arena itself. That was when the idea came to us to put a “piece of the stadium” directly into a card. Together with Michal Ševčík, son of Hradec captain Jiří Ševčík from the memorable 1992/93 season, we began thinking about how to make it happen. Fortunately, Michal is also fond of trading cards, which made everything much easier. Like many others, he collected them when he was younger. 

English names are common in the collecting world – after all, cards travel all over the world. We came up with the name Piece of History – literally, a “piece of history”. 

In more than 25 years in the hockey card and memorabilia business, I have come across all kinds of artefacts embedded in cards: pieces of jerseys, hockey sticks, gloves and pucks. During one of my recent trips to the USA, I even came across a piece of brick from a legendary boxing arena in a collector shop. That piece of brick was being offered for several thousand dollars. That may well have been where this idea was born.

Benches – a great idea! But would it work?

We began exploring what might still be available at the club. It was not easy, because many items had been discarded during the arena renovation in 2010. Ideas included the old logo, player benches, boards and seats. I remembered that the spectator benches used to be yellow and red. As a young boy, I certainly spent plenty of time at the arena back then. 

We needed to search the arena storage areas and hope that a famous artefact would turn up. And it did! Beneath a layer of dust we discovered a forgotten three-seat bench complete with a backrest, bearing seat numbers 3, 4 and 5.

Artificial ice has been used in Hradec Králové since January 1957. The arena has had a roof since the summer of 1969, and from 1980 it also featured red and yellow three-seat fibreglass benches. You could make new hockey friends on them, tear your trousers on a sharp corner, or use the neighbouring bench to make plenty of noise during a game. Wow – these were going to make truly unique cards!

That was it – surely there was no way we could cut them up. 

The benches were fairly thick and made of fibreglass. Could we actually use them in cards? These yellow benches had been at the Hradec arena from 1980 until the 2010 renovation. They had seen a lot of history, and fibreglass is seriously tough material. What on earth could we use to cut it?

At the workshop where we normally cut composite or wooden game-used hockey sticks for cards, I was told in no uncertain terms that they would not touch this material because it would destroy their machinery. So that route was closed. 

That could not be the end of the project, I told myself. I started researching ways to cut fibreglass. We needed tiny rectangles, each identical to the next and accurate to the millimetre, so that they could be fitted into the pre-prepared cards. 

After consulting several experts, we concluded that the job required an extremely sharp blade with many teeth, powerful dust extraction connected to a professional vacuum cleaner, and ideally a guide rail for precise cuts. A professional Festool plunge saw matched those requirements and we managed to secure one. It did an incredible job. The blade had to be sent for sharpening immediately afterwards, and the dust bag had to be thrown away because of the smell. The cutting had to be done outdoors while wearing respirators, although our sense of smell still got quite an experience. We succeeded, and then trimmed the individual pieces on a conventional circular saw. The next challenge was flattening the curved sections carrying seat numbers 3, 4 and 5 so they could actually be used in cards. A heat gun ultimately solved that problem: we heated the pieces and clamped them in a vice. The only casualty was a burnt thumb with a blister. Once cooled, these pieces finally had the shape we needed.

Graphics, Design and Copy

Our graphic designer did a great job. In addition to a design that suited the artefact itself, we also wanted an attractive card with a special surface effect. If you are lucky enough to find this “holy grail” in a pack, you will see that the Piece of History cards literally come alive thanks to a special 3D UV varnish. 

Copy is always a challenge. You need an expert, ideally someone passionate about historical research. Fortunately, Hradec has exactly such a person: Pavel Tureček. Without his research into game records, period newspapers and photo archives, it would have been very difficult to prepare the statistics for the backs of the cards and the texts describing memorable moments to the required standard. 

Handcrafting and Paper Lamination

The next stage was “simply” our usual know-how: carefully embedding extremely rare pieces of memorabilia into a hockey card. It is painstaking work. Every piece is made individually and is unique. During the Covid period, the US trading card market saw a number of record sales worth millions of Czech crowns. Our benches will not reach those heights, but we still believe their owners will value and treasure these cards. 

Congratulations! You have just obtained a unique memorabilia card containing a piece of an original stadium bench

You will find this text on the back of these special cards. We guarantee that you genuinely own a unique piece of a period stadium bench. You can display it at home and it will undoubtedly remind you of the powerful emotions of the 1992/93 season at the arena.

In total, we produced 35 cards containing pieces of the bench. Each card is individually numbered and limited to xx/35 on the front. The three exceptionally rare pieces from this particular three-seat bench each have their own 1-of-1 limitation – seat numbers 3, 4 and 5. There are therefore three completely unique cards, with only one copy of each in existence. Each pack contains 6–7 cards. Statistically, a card containing a piece of the bench appears approximately once in every 30 packs. In the remaining packs, this seventh card is replaced by a thicker card stock piece featuring the original embossed TJ Stadion Hradec Králové logo.  

Without the cooperation and enthusiasm of our employees, captain Jiří Ševčík’s son Michal Ševčík, historian Pavel Tureček and Mountfield HK marketing manager Jan Vavřina, this project would never have been created. The cards will be available on Sunday, 25 February 2024 at ČPP Arena from 13:00 and during the Czech Extraliga game against Olomouc at the MK Cards stand. They are already available for pre-order in the manufacturer’s e-shop.