I must say I had never heard of these maps until a customer bought one in to be framed the other day. The idea is that you scratch off the parts of the map (usually the world) that you have visited. The scratched parts of the map are in a contrasting colour so that it is easy to see which parts of the world you might have been lucky enough to visit. What a brilliant idea! Also it is a great way to see where you might like to visit in the near future. These seem to be readily available on the internet and a google search for "scratch map" should do the trick. However there is a potential downside to these maps . If you are not very accurate with your scratching you can reveal parts of the world that you might not have visited yet. This could be a costly mistake as surely you must visit that country now or else the map will no longer be accurate!