Monies

These envelopes and postcards were made so that a banknote covers the formal destination address of the letter. According to mail regulation, these items should be returned to the sender address. However if a postal servant is tempted to remove the bill, the hidden address is revieled as the destination and the letter changes route.

The delivered letters show evidence that the challenge with exposed money produced a variety of different reactions by different postal personel. These include an envelope arriving "as is" (with the money attached & no special care; a letter returned without money yet with additional manual cancellation for postage under the bill; a letter that arrived in a protective opaque envelope with the address copied onto it; an envelope that got returned torn yet taped back (without the paper bill); an envelope arriving in a clear protective bag so the monie is visible yet untouchable; a letter returned in an official postal plastic bag stating "We sincerely regret that the enclosed postal item sustained damage during transmission to destination" with the paper bill removed from its front yet slipped back inside the envelope.

So far all the items of the series arrived at one of the destinations. None were ever lost or trashed. Hear hear for the moral standards of mailmen accross the globe!

"After the first two Monies letters were returned to me with the paper bill removed from the front I was debating with a friend why it is that way. My assumption was that the person sorting this envelope understands that the exposed money is meant for the taking (who would slice his own envelope to reveil it holds cash?) and accepts my offering. My friend argued that the person actually means to steal the money & trash the evidence (that is - get rid of my letter) but when they find an address undeneith the bill they understand it was a game and play along, relieved from the guilt of the crime.

I decided to test this. I took the returned envelope & placed it in a new Monies envelope, only that this time the bill was bent around the pages do it was hard to remove. This one was returned to me again with the bill missing. The blue envelope was clearly torn apart to remove the cash & taped back together. I had no doubt that my friend was correct. Nevertheless, as the original letter was a wooing letter to a girl I was very interested in, I insisted its content be delivered and I really wanted this mechanism to work. I put the letter within a letter and engulfed it in another Monies envelope. This time I used an old 10 Shequels (~2.5 US dollars) bill that was out of circulation I found to cover the address. This time the letter arrived. By the time she got the pack of letters I've already asked her for a date via facebook. When we met she showed me the letters she got. A 50 Shequel bill from the first letter was there - stamped. I guess one of the mail personell along the letters route removed it from the cover & inserted it inside the envelope so no one else would see. I realized that my experiment had a different answer than I thought. Each mailman has his own unique reaction to the dillema. I hope they are not pissed at me for testing them."