Potatoes in the Mail
249 comments
·April 17, 2025paulkrush
Scoundreller
On the opposite of the spectrum:
From a set of year 2000 USPS experiments:
> Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not wrapped.
https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1...
Image links are dead, including on archive.org :(
timpark
I remembered and searched for the same article. I found this version (on the same domain) with images and better formatting.
https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-au...
drjasonharrison
https://time.com/archive/6712646/shipping-the-cement-is-in-t...
TIME
July 4, 1988 12:00 AM EDT
What is the cheapest way to get 6,000 concrete blocks and 4,600 bags of cement to a remote Eskimo village? Answer: mail them. Sam Krogstad, a construction supplier in Anchorage, is sending the individually addressed blocks (postage: $4.33 each) and bags ($4.27) about 700 miles north to Wainwright, where they will be used to build a small harbor on the Arctic Ocean. Krogstad’s bill for stamps will be about $45,000, less than what other shippers would charge.
The Postal Service is not pleased about the shipment, which will cost about $180,000 to deliver by truck and plane. But the agency can find nothing illegal about Krogstad’s parcels, which weigh a few pounds less than the 70- lb. maximum for regular mail.
IG_Semmelweiss
Mr. Krogstad forgot to check international mailing regulations just as asiduously.
We could have had our own homegrown Temu, in America.
jachee
I moved to Juneau mostly via USPS. It was fairly inexpensive.
It helped a bit that my apartment was directly above the Auke Bay PO.
userbinator
Now you know the reason why courier services often include both weight and volume in their pricing calculations.
bigbuppo
And for freight... density, stackability, and durability.
skrebbel
I would like to understand how this works. Did they hand off the to-be-mailed uwrapped, say, lemon or a hammer or a deer tibia to a person at a post office? Wouldn't the post office clerks just say "sorry you gotta box that, we sell one of these here options"?
The article has lots of info about what clerks said and did at delivery, but little about when they were sent, which suggests to me that there's something about how USPS works that different from how it works where I live that's assumed to be obvious to the reader. You can't just drop a deer bone or a lemon in a mailbox right? It wouldn't fit, would it?
windhaven
From the link: > mailed at public postal collection boxes (when possible to cram the object through the aperture) or at postal stations (if possible).
In the US, post offices generally have drop boxes outside for letters (since you normally just need a stamp), and a larger drop box for packages inside, since you can often get pre-paid labels for stuff like item returns.
lelandfe
> Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route.
chneu
Back when flat rates originally came out I don't think they had an actual weight limit.
A buddy of mine used to cast and paint figurines. Well, someone ordered a bunch of lead ones and they used a flat rate to ship it. The box weighed something like 80lbs. It was basically just a block of lead
It's probably coincidence but a few months later a weight limit was placed on flat rate boxes. It's still crazy high. We always thought the timing was funny.
mlyle
The weight limit is 70 pounds = 31.8 kg. Lead is 11.35 g/cm^3.
Small flat rate box, 21.9 x 13.7 x 4.12 cm = 1236 cm^3 = 14kg; you can fill 100% with lead and mail it. Tungsten is also allegedly fine, but it will weigh 23 kilos and be quite difficult to pick up (can't get a finger under an edge...)
Medium flat rate box = 95kg; you can fill it 33% with lead, or ~45% with steel and mail it.
Large flat rate box = 144kg; only 22% lead.
Y_Y
(CGS units give me nightmares, so I'll swap to SI.)
For solids at room temperature and pressure the best you could do seems to be osmium or iridium, unless you have access to heavy transactinides.
mass/kg substance
2.57e5 small flat rate box
2.26e5 osmium
2.25e5 iridium
2.65e5 meitnerium (theoretical)
kube-system
I don't think it was a coincidence. Basically everyone who shipped raw metals in quantities that would reasonably fit in those boxes, did so.
nancyminusone
My dad once got a package in a decently sized box which was covered in 80 year old US stamps with face values from 2 to 15 cents. There were probably 150 or so stamps in total, enough to cover the few dollars or so of postage.
However, the post office apparently forgot to void the stamps (usually they draw over them with a pen), so his next step was to commit mail fraud. He steamed off 60 cents or so worth of unvoided stamps from the box and sent me a letter at school. That one went through just fine too.
skeeter2020
It's not uncommon that letter mail within the same city in Canada doesn't get the postage marked, and you can reuse the stamps; my parents and grandparents sent a letter back and forth with the same stamp for more than a year!
drjasonharrison
Just because you can do it doesn't make it legal.
USA: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7208 U.S.C. 7208.4
(4)Reuse of stamps
(A) Preparation for reuse
Willfully removes, or alters the cancellation or defacing marks of, or otherwise prepares, any adhesive stamp, with intent to use, or cause the same to be used, after it has already been used; or
(B) Trafficking
Knowingly or willfully buys, sells, offers for sale, or gives away, any such washed or restored stamp to any person for use, or knowingly uses the same; or
(C) Possession
Knowingly and without lawful excuse (the burden of proof of such excuse being on the accused) has in possession any washed, restored, altered stamp, which has been removed from any vellum, parchment, paper, instrument, writing, package, or article; ... shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/479.163#:~:text=prev...
§ 479.163 Reuse of stamps prohibited. A stamp once affixed to one document cannot lawfully be removed and affixed to another. Any person willfully reusing such a stamp shall be subject to the penalty prescribed by 26 U.S.C. 7208.
Canada:
Section 55 of the Canada Post Corporation Act deals with evading payment of postage, and it is an indictable offence under Section 60, punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment. This means that individuals who intentionally avoid paying for postage or who use the postal service without paying are subject to legal penalties, including potential incarceration.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-10/FullText.html Evading payment of postage
55 Every person commits an offence who, for the purpose of evading payment of postage,
(a) encloses a letter or any writing intended to serve the purpose of a letter in mail not paid at the rate of postage for letters;
(b) uses in payment of postage any previously used postage stamp;
shagie
> Unconventional postcards: A thin sheet of plywood with a Sharpie address label is a fun postcard. (it just costs a lot more than a normal postcard)
I've got a bunch of water color paper post cards from my days of random vacations and a large format camera. I recall that they also had a slightly more than post card rate postage on them (though not excessively so).
I used Polaroid type 59 film (peel apart) in the field and did a transfer right there. Take a picture in Yosemite? Pull it out, roller it on to the paper and drop it in the mail box. It was a one of a kind. The damage incurred while mailing (blunted corners, scuffs and such) was part of the nature of the art.
There were also families who were curious about the process and I'd sell them a sheet of film at cost for them to do what they wanted - be it have a photograph or go through the process of making a post card themselves. There was also the "this is what an old time camera looks like and how it works" that interested some of the younger children - the heavy black cloth and the upside down image.
abound
> Unconventional postcards: A thin sheet of plywood
Can confirm, I laser cut wedding invitations out of 1/4" plywood and mailed them out like that. I think it required some "non-machineable" stamp or similar, but they all arrived at their intended destinations.
WalterBright
> Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value.
That's true of pretty much all stamps from all countries since WW2. Postal agencies have discovered that collectors will buy new issues and never mail them, preserving them as "mint". So it's pretty much free money for the Postal agency. Many countries (including the USPS) constantly come up with new designs to sell to collectors.
I noticed that when I began collecting as a boy, thinking the post WW2 issues were all just "soup can labels" and had zero interest in them.
retetr
Your comment made me think of the Terry Pratchett book "Going Postal" in which a conman is put in charge of the post office and quickly realizes what you said: selling stamps is free money. One of my favorites from his later discworld books.
WalterBright
Yeah, they are little more than the sticker books you buy for kids.
whartung
I taped a quarter to an envelope and it went through (obviously when postage was 25c).
I asked if anyone had a stamp and someone suggested I just do that.
Good thing it worked, it was my rent check.
SoftTalker
> Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value
"Forever stamps" were introduced in 2007. What other stamps before then didn't have a face value? I don't remember any.
yojo
I think the idea is you can buy old stamp collections for less than face value.
E.g. this collection of 8000 stamps is $75: https://www.ebay.com/itm/396477663178
Looking at the pictures, many are more than $.01 value.
Assuming they’re uncancelled, you’ll end up multiples of your money ahead if you rip the collection apart and use it to mail stuff.
The challenge would be having enough surface area on your package to plaster on 6-cent stamps.
electroly
It is "legal enough" to stuff whole sheets of stamps into a pouch and attach the pouch to a parcel, if you do it at the post office and have them cancel the stamps at the counter. Let them know they can just use a Sharpie to cancel whole sheets at a time. Legal enough in the sense that my local post office lets me do it, and the local postmaster has okayed it, and the packages always make it, but I'm not entirely sure if it's 100% above-board. My record is over 800 stamps on a single Priority Mail box. Way, way more than would fit on the surface area of the box, and certainly way more than anyone could reasonably use if they actually had to apply the adhesive on the stamps.
Scoundreller
> The challenge would be having enough surface area on your package to plaster on 6-cent stamps.
It’s not too hard if you mail paper that can’t be folded.
Can also cover what you can and get the clerk to print you a label for the rest.
taco_emoji
I couldn't parse that at first either, but I think what they mean is that they don't have value as a collector's item. They still have face value, but they sell for less than that because they're not perceived as actual legal postage any longer, even though they actually are.
neilv
On a childhood trip, to visit family in sunny Hawaii, we mailed back this coconut from the family yard, by writing our rainy Portland address on the coconut in Sharpie.
(The coconut was one of the large, oblong ones, with a smooth surface. Not the small, spherical things in the grocery store. So there was plenty of room for a legible address.)
When we got home, we planted it in a large indoor planter, hanged a lamp over it, and grew a sizable palm tree in our living room.
royal__
The small fuzzy spherical things are just what's inside the large oblong things, once the husk has been removed. People who have never really interacted with coconuts may be surprised to learn this.
culi
I briefly lived in Miami when I was a child and interacted with a lot of coconuts. I am surprised to learn this
nightfly
Lol, I remember seeing a coconut in the student mail receiving area at PSU in 2010 or so. So I like how this has been done multiple times
jedberg
I stayed at a timeshare in Hawaii that had a "decorate a coconut and mail it home" activity. Every hour they generated 10 coconuts for mailing basically.
It's pretty common in Hawaii. In fact, I think the reason you can send them is because of lobbying from Hawaii.
smoyer
I wonder if that's the one that's now in the HUB fish bowl (was there on Monday)
CoffeeOnWrite
Grandparent post mentions Portland. PSU may mean Portland State rather than Penn State
suriya-ganesh
What am I getting wrong? you planted a coconut but grew a palm tree ?
riknos314
> The coconut tree (Cocos nucifera) is a member of the palm tree family
racingmars
Coconut trees are in the palm tree family.
All coconut trees are palm trees, but not all palm trees grow coconuts.
giarc
https://youtu.be/0k2Di6QqqEA?si=mUv-0O79DecW6SFX
Take a listen.
hammock
You got it right
umeshunni
Ha, I was confused too... but in the US, the terms coconut tree, palm tree and coconut palm are used interchangeably.
In India, you'd call a coconut tree a coconut tree and an arecanut tree a palm.
thaumasiotes
> I was confused too... but in the US, the terms coconut tree, palm tree and coconut palm are used interchangeably.
You're still confused. Coconut tree and palm tree aren't interchangeable; to be a coconut tree, the tree has to grow coconuts. All palm trees count as "palm trees", whether they grow coconuts or not. The prototypical palm tree grows dates.
veunes
That's such a perfect blend of wholesome and chaotic
thaumasiotes
> The coconut was one of the large, oblong ones, with a smooth surface. Not the small, spherical things in the grocery store.
You say that like you think those are different things.
tptacek
I don't understand how there can be 94 comments on this thread and not one of them is from someone who attempted (or succeeded) in mailing someone a potato. I am a homeowner. I have a address. I will receive a potato, or send one to whomever wants one. What's important about this story is "is is true?". Who's going to test it with me?
buu700
I did something pretty similar with USPS around 15 years ago. Walked into the post office, handed them a banana, they slapped a label on it, and off it went. A few weeks later I heard from my friend in Monaco that her mom had gone to check the mail and found her hand covered in rotten banana. Whoops.
jedberg
> What's important about this story is "is is true?"
The URL is at usps.com, so I'm guessing this is about as official as it gets.
I've mailed a coconut before and it worked. Never done a potato.
blululu
I have mailed a potato before. Sent it to a friend to celebrate Columbus Day (this was back when we overlooked his atrocities because it was a cool Italian guy who trafficked exotic nightshades across the Atlantic). It arrived just fine. The postal worker was quite helpful about wrapping it up with the appropriate postage. Post your address on the public internet and I’m sure you will get a lot more potatoes than you would expect.
fahrnfahrnfahrn
I sent a banana in the mail. I also sent a paperback book without any sort of box or wrapper. I think it was as Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
layman51
Mailing a banana is something I was wondering about when I first saw this thread. I remember seeing a photo in a book many years ago of a banana with a postage stamp on it and I was wondering whether it was really possible.
throwup238
Did the book make it to Magrathea?
wyclif
As one of the wealthiest planets in the galaxy, I'm sure it did because of Magrathea's exceptional central planning infrastructure.
jakebasile
I would like a potato. Emailed you.
tptacek
I have received your email and do hereby commit to sending you a potato.
jakebasile
I have the USPS notification service [1] where they send me an email with a scan of all my incoming mail. I look forward to seeing what this one looks like.
timewizard
You wouldn't download a potato!
9dev
I’m still wondering if they are going to potato internationally, in which case I would very gladly exchange some continental taters with a colony-grown variety with you!
andrewflnr
There's at least one who posted just a little bit before you. ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724688
HeyLaughingBoy
You do realize that you just inspired the "mail a potato" webapp, don't you? I give it approximately one week before we see a Show HN with that.
eddyfromtheblok
whoa whoa whoa. you can't post multimillion startup ideas on here FOR FREE! somebody's probably registered pota.to already!
wrboyce
There are already a few iterations of this idea out there!
brk
Surprised there has been no mention of Wired's Return To Sender yet: https://www.wired.com/2008/12/st-15returntosender/
kelnos
> Once he discovered Wired’s contest, he sent us [...] a mailbox
I snorted at this. How meta.
ipcress_file
My wife and I moved our stuff across Canada -- from Alberta to Nova Scotia -- by mail. That's when I found out about the "monotainer," a giant palletized wire box that they fill with items heading to a common destination. Our boxes all went in a monotainer and made it to Halifax before we did.
The nicest part: Canada Post moved us in! Everything was waiting in our new apartment when we arrived.
0xbadcafebee
You used to be able to ship via Amtrak, but they suspended the service. You could basically send up to a 500lbs pallet. You could also ship a bicycle, or a dead body. All three required correct packaging.
A bunch of us used the service to ship cheap PCs and CRT monitors up to New York for HOPE one year. The shipping cost more than the computers, but it wasn't much (a couple hundred bucks). Public Terminal Cluster was a huge success. Afterward we didn't want to ship them back home, so we gave away two pallets worth of old computer gear to whoever passed by on 33rd St. Took about an hour.
chneu
Greyhound still kinda does this. I think they're phasing it out, or they already did.
Basically if you could put it in a box and it would fit under their bus they would ship it to anywhere on their route.
notatoad
i grew up in rural canada and we used this all the time. it didn't even have to be in a box - if you could convince the driver to let you put it on the bus, you could ship it. and as long as it was going to another stop on the same bus route you could load it onto the bus yourself and the person you were shipping it to could take it off the bus, so there was no worrying about how the shippers were going to treat your stuff.
it was almost as good a service as having a friend with a truck that was going that way. but sadly, no more greyhound in canada.
timschmidt
Buddy bought a new (to him) car door off ebay this way.
rriley
USPS actually allows a bunch of odd items if they meet basic requirements:
- Potato: write the address directly on the skin and add postage - Coconut: often mailed from Hawaii gift shops - Brick: just needs postage and an address - Inflated beach ball: address it directly, ships like a parcel - Plastic Easter egg: fill it, tape it shut, and label it - Flip-flop: address the sole and send it off - Small pumpkin: allowed if it’s dry and not restricted by ag rules - Live queen bees (plus attendants): surface mail only, special label - Day-old chicks: special packaging and timing required
IndrekR
Have mailed live queen bees in Europe as well. Funniest was when receiving some (I think it was from Denmark to Estonia before we joined the EU) and one delivery got stuck in customs due to unpaid alcohol tax — someone had misread “Live Bees” as “Live Beer”. Fortunately this was cleared out within two days and bees were still alive (but a little short on food).
squigz
What does shipping a live queen bee look like? How many servants does she travel with?
keane
The queen is placed in a small isolation container called a queen cage: https://www.mannlakeltd.com/california-mini-queen-cages/
The queen cage is placed in a Bee Bus: https://bee-pros.com/beeBus.html
Postage is affixed to the Bee Bus which is filled with 3 lbs. of bees, which is about 10,000 to 12,000 bees: https://www.mannlakeltd.com/carniolan-honey-bees/california-...
1024core
I was working for a postal contractor and we had to go to the local P&DC (warehouse sized building where all the local mail comes in to be sorted and then shipped to various destinations).
The local foreman was giving us a lecture about safety and things not to do in there, and we were standing there listening to him. To my right about 10' away were a couple of boxes around 2' tall each. I was listening and my eyes were wandering, taking in the gigantic space when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the box move! It like tilted a little and there was definite movement inside (it had a slit in it)! I yelped like a little kid: "that box moved!"
The foreman nonchalantly dismissed it saying, "yeah those are ducks being mailed". I was shocked to say the least.
pixl97
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s a buddy of mine caught and mailed a lot of live snakes.
Never heard of one getting out. Bet it would have been exciting if one did.
GrantMoyer
How cruel.
GrantMoyer
Let me elaborate. I'm not saying the OPs story is cruel. I'm saying shipping live animals is cruel. Shipping animals isn't transporting them using some specialized service; it's litterally sending them through the mail system like any other parcel, the same system that regularly damages heavily padded packages. The practice is still common today, especially for live chicks, and many animals die due to the conditions of transport. Their deaths are treated as an expected loss.
mjevans
It's the same sort of 'logic' where E.G. in Rimworld (offhand) animals don't have (or didn't in the past versions) have conditions which lead to mental breakdown. They were handled with the level of needs of the worst treated categories of slaves. Though thinking of the phrases 'live stock' and the destiny of most farm animals...
thecosas
josephscott
Looks like the bank built with bricks via the mail is still there - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4555831,-109.528633,3a,75y,2...
shoo
That history of the bank of Vernal was fascinating, thank you for sharing. Parcel post offered for packages of up to 50 pounds + price charged to post parcels from Salt Lake City to Vernal being less than half the cost charged by private carriers ==> lots of freight to Vernal starts getting sent by post! Then, bank director wanting pressed bricks for the front the new bank building in Vernal + closest pressed brick manufacturer to Vernal being in Salt Lake City + post still the cheapest freight option to Vernal ==> 37.5 tons of pressed bricks packed into 50 pound crates and posted!
Anyone interested in the history of freight & trade may also enjoy reading Marc Levinson's book "The Box" about the shipping container. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/th...
amccollum
The story of the bank built from bricks sent through the mail reminds me of the time I completed a move from Austin to Boston by packing all my possessions into rubber tubs and sending them by parcel post.
The delivery date was a range, and I wasn't there on the day of the first attempted delivery. When I called the post office about it, their response (in a thick Boston accent) was, "oh, so you're the tub guy, huh?"
All in all, it was a really convenient way to execute a cross-country move, assuming you don't have a lot of stuff!
wileydragonfly
Back in that brief window when Amazon was bribing USPS to deliver on Sundays and I could get 50-75lbs of bird seed for $12 shipped I had lots of fascinating Sunday mornings watching postal service workers swear at me and heave bags at my front door.
HeyLaughingBoy
I don't think that stopped: my neighborhood gets lots of USPS deliveries from Amazon on Sundays.
mopenstein
That's how a lot of military personal move their belongings. Just slap an address on their suitcase or duffle bag and mail it.
barnas2
Or a TON of checked bags. Ran in to a guy in the airport once checking 10 bags. He bought the cheapest suitcase sets he could find, packed what he could, and sold the rest.
bombcar
My cross-country move was
* Sell all furniture
* Shove everything in my car
* Put all my books in boxes and send media mail
jrmg
When I moved internationally, I found out about the ‘M-Bag’ service. The post office gives you real mail sacks (hefty, expensive seeming things!), which you can directly fill with books and printer matter (and nothing else!). They’re then tagged after sealing the drawstring, and shipped internationally!
I’m sure the USPS wants those sacks back, but the post office in the UK, where I had them sent, was just perplexed by them and told me to keep them.
m463
> I wasn't there on the day of the first attempted delivery.
oooh, ouch!
I wonder if they have to unload and reload the truck.
uticus
going up one level in url to facts.ups.com, then navigating to fun, lots of quirky stuff there.
drunkonvinyl
Flail and flail, it’s just another brick in the mail.
zkms
There are even multiple services that will mail a Potatoe to the recepient, possibly anonymously: https://potatoparcel.com https://www.mailaspud.com https://www.anonymouspotato.com https://mysterypotato.com (the only one I have used is "anonymouspotato").
ipjrms
Are they services or just middlemen who turn around and use USPS?
sva_
It looks like they put the potato in a box?
shoo
Another great postal history article: "The Pneumatic Mail Tubes: New York's Hidden Highway And Its Development" https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/pneumatic-tub...
Throughput:
> The operation of the Pneumatic Tube System involved air forced cylinders known as "carriers", traveling in a spinning motion, through a well-greased tube at 30 miles an hour. At its peak productivity six million pieces of mail would whisk through the system daily at a rate of 5 carriers a minute with each carriers maximum load of approximately 500 letters
Shaking out the system:
> The first cylindrical carrier to travel through the New York City [pneumatic tube] system was one that contained a Bible, a flag and a copy of the Constitution. The second contained an imitation peach in honor of Senator Chauncy Depew, a driving force in this project. He was fondly known as "The Peach". A third carrier had a black cat in it, for reasons unknown to this author.
Diagnosing and fixing stalls in the network:
> The occasional carrier stalls in a tube it could be easily detected. Each receiving machine was equipped with a "tell-tale" fan. If a carrier failed to arrive on time the air pressure would fall to level that would cause the fan to stop revolving. The operator at the affected station would call the switchboard at the telephone number PE 6-7000. On a control board there, the blocking carrier could be located through colored lights designating each station. In 99% of the cases the arrested carrier could be made mobile again by increasing the air pressure behind the blockage and decreasing air pressure in front of it. This would in effect cause a vacuum. In the 1% of the time that these methods did not work a maintenance crew would have had to go out and dig up the streets.
Perks for staff operating the system:
> Recently I met an old friend who told me her father was once a rocketeer [responsible for the sending and receiving of the carriers]. In conversation with him I learned that he had spent some time working on the Pneumatic Tube System at the Bronx General Post Office. [...] He told me something off the record. Since there was a renowned sandwich shop in the vicinity of the Bronx General Post Office, they often got orders from the downtown postal stations. The sandwiches were delivered through the system. Now that's what I call a real submarine sandwich!
m463
I wish I could find the article.
Years ago, someone tried mailing a lot of stuff through the post office.
I remember they mailed a $20 bill, and tried sneaking something oversized like skiis into a mail truck.
can't find the article though - search has really been SEO'd to death by companies involved in mail.
ekam
o3 found it- guess its a sign of where search is going: https://www.nalc.org/news/the-postal-record/2011/april-2011/...
and
https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1...
m463
lol, that is it! :)
$20 bill. Days to delivery, 4.
Ski. ... The ski was slipped into a bin of postage that was being loaded into a truck behind a station (a collaborating staff member created a verbal disturbance up the street to momentarily distract postal workers attention). ...
nonethewiser
Speaks to how bad search has gotten but some things are kind of inherently hard to search. “Tip of my tongue” sort of things. Llms are pretty good for that kind of stuff.
wileydragonfly
Cockeyed
pavel_lishin
Man, that's a blast from the past. I loved Rob Cockerham's projects.
weinzierl
I once sent a beer coaster without envelope and just with an address scribbled on and a stamp to a beer loving friend from a holiday. We both were surprised it worked.
Also in the late 90s I remember my favourite computer mag having a picture of a 5 1/4 inch floppy sent to them. Complete with postmarked stamp. Allegedly it survived the procedure.
dcminter
Ha! I did that a few times with 3½" disks - address and stamp on the label and slap a bit of tape over the shutter to prevent dust ingress. No issues.
I don't think I'd have risked it with 5¼" floppies though, they were a lot less robust and I can't imagine the franking machines would have been good for them.
I love parcels. Always have. My mom worked at the post office.
Cheap postage hack: Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value. You can buy old stamps on eBay for about 60–75 % of face value as “face” stamps—and they’re perfectly valid for mailing.
Unconventional postcards: A thin sheet of plywood with a Sharpie address label is a fun postcard. (it just costs a lot more than a normal postcard)
Small Flat Rate Box physics: With a 70 lb limit, you’d need something exotic—say, a primordial black hole—to exceed the weight cap.
Spare the carrier’s back: A Medium Flat Rate Box packed with 10,000 pre 1982 copper pennies tips the scale at roughly 68 lb. Maybe ship the coins another way—your postal carrier will thank you!