Adam J. Choit

What’s a stamp cost these days, 44 cents?  Although the price of stamps has gone up steadily over the years, it’s still pretty amazing to think that one can send a letter from Miami to Seattle, and it costs so little.

Nevertheless, I still had a ridiculous idea for some postal shenanigans (I’m sure I’m not the first person ever to think of doing this).  I’ve never actually tried this, but I wonder if anyone has actually done the following: 1) Put the address you actually want to send a letter to in the left corner of an envelope, as if it’s the return address.  2) Put pretty much any address you want in the middle portion of the envelope 3) Do not put a stamp on the envelope.

Shouldn’t the letter then be sent back to the return address — like if someone attempted to mail it without postage?

I suppose someone might catch on to this, but it’s not as if people don’t mail letters to one another from places other than from where they live.  If I need to send someone a letter, but I’m on vacation far from home, I would still put my actual home address as the return address, not a hotel or anything like that obviously.

I mean, if you put a letter out to be mailed from a residential address, and you stick it in your mailbox to go, the mailman might just leave it there — but what about with public mailboxes, and mailboxes at the post office?

I don’t know.  This whole thing seems like a great (terrible) idea that would just be too easy, and thus would never work.

If this actually did work, I’m pretty sure everyone would already be doing it…