I shred about 80% of the postal mail I receive. Most of the items chewed up by my shredder are the old stand-bys – offers for credit cards and insurance – and a few are for charities I have never heard of. As my intuition on junk mail has heightened over the years, many of these go right into the shredder without being opened.

The other day, my shredder stopped in the middle of shredding an item. When I pulled it out, I saw a shiny new Jefferson nickel in the address window. A nickel? Messaging inside the envelope mentioned something about sending the nickel back to the charity, accompanied by many more.

Just as spammers are trying to get their message across, so are snail mailers. Continuing that comparison, are nickels the new Trojan files attached to email? I cannot recall the name of the charity that sent that mailing with the nickel, and they certainly did not get it or a red cent from me.

Comments

Mother’s Against Drunk Driving sent me a $3 check in the mail, in an envelope marked “CHECK ENCLOSED”.

The accompanying letter said, “Go ahead, cash it if you want!”, “But we’d prefer you don’t, it was to get your attention, and we’re not in the business of giving away free money.”

After pondering the ethics of this, I threw it away.  Although I would have liked to stick it to them for spamming me.

Wonder how much that campaign cost them?

Comment by Ryan
on 03/07/07 at 01:20 AM
 

Legally, you could cash that check, as it was unsolicited, but ethics and morals would ahve swayed me to shred it as well.

As for cost, that could be a good follow on to the RED campaign, where more money was spent than was amde from purchases of RED merchandise.

Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 03/07/07 at 09:19 AM
 

heh. it probably cost them more in production costs to get the nickel to appear in the window than the nickel itself!

Comment by spudart
on 03/13/07 at 10:35 PM
 

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