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Comment by polyfractal | Hacker News Reader

Mildly disappointing ending to what I hoped to be some epic story/gimick/whatever.

Amusing that the USPS thought the vintage (fake) Egyptian postage was real though

Oh, I disagree completely. I love the serendipity of this story far more than if it were just a viral stunt on the part of Disney, U Chicago, or anyone else. Something entirely mundane became something extraordinary for everyone to enjoy.

I'm going to call that a win.

and the resolution is great too:

"Paul has graciously let us know that he will make the intended recipient a new journal, and that we are welcome to keep this one— thanks, Paul! It will find its home either in the Oriental Institute at UChicago or the Special Collections at the Regenstein Library because, as many have noted, “It belongs in a museum!”. "

It will be simply too cool if it ends up in the Oriental Institute!

Paul has just had epic incidental marketing.

That's actually a very good point. I rescind my original disappointment. It was a pretty cool story that emerged out of something as simple as a postal mishap.

The USPS thought the fake postage was real after the fake package came out of its properly-stamped wrapper once it was already in the USPS process stream. It's always easier to pass a fake at a point where everyone assumes the fake has already been verified.

Now we just need someone to invent a gimmick disintegrating envelope. Stuff multiple letters with fake stamps into it, and mail several letters for the price of one!

Great way to disrupt the postal system! It's a legal gray area, but you would only be against it if you're against innovation and new technology! I'll call it Stampr.

I'm pretty sure there isn't much gray area in defrauding the postal service.

A "hack" would be to switch the sender and receiver addresses on the envelop; and mail without a postal stamp. What is the postal service supposed to do with an envelop missing the stamp? Yes, you are right. Return it to the sender.

Reminds me of when we would make collect calls from a payphone and our parents would get: "Will you accept a collect call from...MomPickUsUp"

Haha that reminds me of a similar hack we discoverd as kids. Australian payphones had an interesting feature where you could place a call without paying however the call would hangup almost immediately upon being answered. There was a split second where you could actually hear each other so we'd usually yell something out and our parents would know it was us waiting to be picked up from the beach or some such.

My Mom's family had a different solution. At 7 o'clock, call. If you let it ring once then it means pick us up now. If you let it ring three times, then pick us up in an hour.

Thinking about it now, Skype gives rings on the caller's side even before it's connected on the receiver's side. In that case, use synchronization. If it takes between 1 and 4 caller rings for the receiver to ring, then a call at 7:00 means "come now" and a call at 7:05 means "come in an hour."

When I was 9 I used to send my SASE and $.50 or so off to various mail-order companies. They required that you put your own address as both the return-to and destination on the SASE...through absentmindedness I soon discovered that the stamped part of SASE was optional.

I did this a while back as a test; it traveled two hours away without postage, despite both recipient names being the same.

In the UK, they don't do this - they send it on to the recipient, but hold the mail at the office until the recipient travels down there and pays postage plus a £1 fee.

I'm not surprised at all. I have a relative who sends out Christmas cards every year using cancelled stamps from those 1000 stamps for a dollar stamp collector starter kits. He has been doing this for 15+ years. It is amusing though to get a Christmas card in 2012 covered in multiple 8 cent Eisenhower stamps.

Apparently stamp fraud is not a high priority issue at USPS.

Are those real, but used, Eisenhower stamps, or fake ones?

They'd be real, but used stamps. I can't imagine anyone cheap enough to bother faking 8 cent stamps -- although apparently there are people cheap enough to use cancelled ones! =P

Kidding aside, I think it'd be awesome to get cards like that -- and maybe the USPS thinks so too, which is maybe why they're letting them through. =)

> Kidding aside, I think it'd be awesome to get cards like that -- and maybe the USPS thinks so too, which is maybe why they're letting them through. =)

haha, totally agree, I suspect that the canceled stamps are detected, probably automatically, but when a human gets involved, he thinks it's funny/cool/nostalgic ("why those are the same stamps my grandma used!"), and just laughs and passes them on...

Also, you know, Christmas... :]

I've seen uncanceled, but taped-on (adhesive had gone bad) stamped mail returned for invalid postage.

I suppose you pretty much have to assume that once a package is in the system, it's valid, especially if it's got foreign stamps.

"Mildly disappointing ending to what I hoped to be some epic story/gimick/whatever."

I started to wonder if it was some sort of publicity stunt by Disney to get interest into a new Indiana Jones movie after buying Lucasfilm.

Unlike Star Wars, Lucasfilm doesn't outright own all of the rights to Indiana Jones. Disney would have to do deals with Paramount to do much of anything with Indiana Jones.

Something I hadn't previously considered is that given Disney does its own distribution, they probably have no need to use 20th Century Fox on the new Star Wars movies. Having a Star Wars movie that doesn't open up with the 20th Century Fox drumroll is going to be downright weird.

Good to know. The only Indiana Jones movie I have seen is the Crystal Skull one, so I'm not up on my Jones.

"Something I hadn't previously considered is that given Disney does its own distribution, they probably have no need to use 20th Century Fox on the new Star Wars movies. Having a Star Wars movie that doesn't open up with the 20th Century Fox drumroll is going to be downright weird."

I didn't think of that either. It would be weird, although, I don't think I'm going to see it anyways. The story has ended and I'm content.

Go watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. I can't bear the thought of someone having only seen the Crystal Skull (aka Nuke the Fridge) as their exposure to Indiana Jones.

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