I hate it when mail gets
returned to me. It doesn’t happen every week but I’d say about once every other
week. Considering the volume of mail, I send out, it’s not surprising that some
comes back. Maybe 1/25 comes back. They come back because of a long list of
reasons, most notably someone has moved. At least I think that’s the main one.
I can also put in the wrong address, which happens a lot. One illegible number
and it doesn’t hit its mark. Printing a “one” in the European fashion is a
must. Who knows how many are lost in mail purgatory forever!
For four or five years
I’ve collected all of my returned mail in one large plastic bin. There’s a lot
in there, maybe one hundred items. Each one was at least 58 cents to send,
sometimes $1.30 and sometimes packages make their way back. It adds up! My policy
is to keep them. I’m not going to try and send them back to the person that was
initially supposed to receive them. Returned items become mine. I don’t open
them I just put them in the plastic bin.
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Returned From Germany
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Quite often they return
with fun stickers from around the world, often in foreign languages. I’ve
scanned and then printed some of these stickers to use in my own work. Basically
me and a foreign post office are collaborating on a project they have no idea
about. Hell, it’s easier to get unknowing foreign post offices to come together
on a project than other mail-artists. Some of the envelopes look amazing.
Amazing enough that I decided to put the more interesting ones in plastic and
collect them in a binder. The ones that have the most additions to them are my
favorites by far. Who knows what’s in there, but they sure are pretty.
Picking my favorites for
the binder leaves a lot leftover. I already have too many plastic bins filled
with mail-art and shelves filled with special collections, another project that
could go on forever isn’t needed. One day, while uploading images of thrifted
t-shirts to sell on eBay, I got an idea. Why not sale some of my returned mail?
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Returned from Japan
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If you’ve been around
mail-art for more than a couple years, you’ll have a response to the idea of
selling mail-art. The original tenants of this non-exclusive club says you
should not sale mail-art. “Send as good as you receive” but “don’t sale.” For
most of us this isn’t much of a problem because there’s no market to sell to.
As I’ve dug deeper into
the network a few names popped up that that were able to sale their work. Being
an interested person, one who likes to write and mildly investigate from his
work desk, I wrote a thing about this a couple years ago. I asked questions to
a few folks and wrote up a big thing about it all, something like this. There
was no value judgement in them selling, I just wanted to think through mail-art
maxims. Not to ruffle any feathers, or to hurt anyone’s chances on the open
market, I never posted my hastily constructed story.
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Returned from Germany
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Sale or not, I don’t
care. Right now you can get some Al Ackerman stuff on EBay for next to nothing.
I’m not bidding, but you could if that was something you were interested in.
I have no cache in the
mail-art world. There’s no market for anything I make. I find it difficult to
even give away things I make. No one is interested, and that’s fine…most of the
time. When you’re proud of something you’ve made and no one cares, that sucks.
That takes the wind out of the sails for a short period. So…you take the thing
and put it on an ever growing stack of past creations. Stickers, people always
like stickers. Make a sticker and people will seem interested.
Because no one is interested
in my free works, I decided to sale some of my returned mail on eBay. You know,
establish my real worth on the open market place. After hanging out in thrift
stores for the past twenty years, I’ve come to learn that idiots will buy anything.
Why not get an idiot to buy something I made?
I posted four different
envelopes that had gone to another country and returned. I put the initial
bidding price as $1.30 and the shipping as $1.30. One for the stamp that was
initially used and one or the second stamp. Clearly, I was doing a thing.
Clearly I was trying to illicit a response from people. Unfortunately, like
usual, whenever you get excited about something and think it’s an original idea
that might get a conversation going, it doesn’t go that far. I was convinced
that my wittiness would be met with overwhelming praise but only a handful of
people seemed to realize that it was all a type of bullshit performance.
Of course Richard C. in
Illinois got it. He wrote through he IUOMA website, “28.03.21 Dare Mister Jon Foster
& Mister Adam R., ....I think it was the mail artist Lon Spiegelman who
stated eons ago that "Money & Mail-Art don't mix." ---but I in
turn ask: Does that mean it is worthless or priceless??? (Not to mention that I highly value my
meager collection of Spiegelman [as well as my equally valued Foster & R.
collections]). ......................I've often thought that a
"Mail-Art" subscription service was a practical solution to any &
all that might wish to be involved in mail art (each mail artist setting his
& or her rules for involvement [well, maybe a standard agreement might
work]). .... & I've tried it, but only as a result of a charitable
contribution on my part with no reimbursements coming my way. I suspect that I'm not really confident of
any sustained interest in my offerings & also, my lack of entrepreneurial
skills are the reasons I haven't pursued this notion. SinCelery, Richard Canard
......Post Scriptum: Go, Jon, Go!!!
Adam R. in Minnesota went
a little further and actually bid on one envelope. He wrote, “I am definitely
going to resell it Jon! We just need to drive the price up more in order to set
a new industry standard for mail art sales, at the very least a standard that
accommodates the current rate of inflation. I am going to sell it for a dollar
more than whatever I purchase it for though l, because well, i am only in it
for the money anyways!” As the kids say, Adam got the assignment. In the end,
Adam ended up winning that one bid at $1.80. He had a mild bidding war going with
one other person that caused the price to rise slightly. A few days after that
initial bid he bid on the other three I posted. Guess what, he won all four
bids. His bill came to a little over five dollars, excluding shipping which was
$1.30 on each piece. So, for less than $14.00, including shipping, he got all
four returned pieces of mail. He has no idea what’s inside.
Of course it wasn’t
$14.00 profit for me. I had to mail all four of them to Adam at a combined rate
of almost five dollars. I tossed in a few other things to make it worth his
time. I also had the eBay fees that took money right off the top. If I wanted
to, I could also could subtract the revenue lost on the initial postage for
each envelope. In reality, I ended up making one or two dollars on the whole
thing. This “profit” confirmed one thing about mail-art to me, you can get
rich!
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Money, Money, Money. Don't worry, he paid.
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