Monday, June 25, 2012

A trade with the Dimwit that includes a math problem

Pop quiz, hotshot:  two bloggers send one card to each other in PWEs.  Both pack them the same way and label them "DO NOT BEND" in big letters and then entrust them to the care of the USPS.  How many cards arrive in their original condition to each recipient?  Show your work.

Answer:  ONE.

Proof:  Here's what happened to the card I sent to Sam (Daily Dimwit), a situation that still has me pissed off.  Apparently I missed the memo that it was USPS Opposite Day the day I mailed out his card because the geniuses that work there interpreted "DO NOT BEND" as "HERP DERP LET'S ALL TAKE TURNS SITTING OUR STUPID FAT ASSES ALL OVER THIS ENVELOPE!  YOLO BIEBER CROCS!"
Official USPS spokeswoman Sarah Palin
Will someone PLEASE get on creating a competing service that DOESN'T fuck up 80% of the time?  Anyway, Sam was more than gracious about the whole thing, so I'll make sure to make this up to him the next time I see anything cool with an Astros logo on it.  And now, here's the card he sent me--one I saw in his trade bait list that caught my eye and started this trade in the first place:


Miguel Cabrera 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter jersey


The Allen & Ginter base set has never done anything for me and frankly I could really do without it, (though I have a feeling a bunch of you will be chasing me down with torches and pitchforks for such blasphemy) but it does result in some pretty cool hits.  Case in point, I do very much like the framed relic and auto cards, maybe because the actual card piece is small enough to justify the included relic, and the frame adds a nice touch to bring the whole thing together.

This is just my second Miggy relic featuring him as a Tiger and I'm most definitely thrilled to have it, so thanks again to Sam for making for another stupidly easy trade as usual, plus for being understanding about USPS's trademark ineptitude and total disregard for customer service.  I think we all know who the REAL Dimwit in this deal was!

Stay tuned for an even larger trade package pretty soon, as soon as I can make the effort to scan it all.  I won't say who it's from, but considering how huge I'm implying it is, I bet you can guess the source.

6 comments:

  1. hahahaha... that's a great post! Math is fun!

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    1. Well, I happen to think that 1) You're the one that got shafted in this deal and 2) You went too easy on the dumbasses at the USPS. I'm gonna start ordering huge items from Amazon and then returning them just to keep them from bending other people's mail all day.

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  2. Haha nice.

    Probably got bent in the rollers. Those rollers are the bane of card collecting's existence - without them it'd be so much easier to ship cards!

    If you can get them to stamp "non-machinable" on the package they usually won't send it through the rollers. But then sometimes they'll want to charge you as if it's a package. And other times they'll send it through the rollers anyway. So it's all a mess haha.

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    1. That inconsistency is what pisses me off. As I told Sam, beyond simply writing "DO NOT BEND", since other people mentioned that's not always enough, when I shipped his PWE using the Automated Postage Center as I do for just about everything, I specifically checked the option that the contents were "non-bendable" since I was willing to accept whatever additional charges that might incur, if necessary. It also bugs the crap out of me that my card arrived to him damaged while his got to me just fine, despite using the exact same shipping method. This is obviously an organization staffed by idiots who don't give a shit about what people send (not that FedEx and UPS are any better, I'm sure) and if I have to I'll start insuring everything I ship so they can pay for all the damage they're doing.

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  3. Writing "DO NOT BEND" will not prevent the USPS from putting the envelope through the sorting machine. There is a specific amount extra to have the card manually sorted (+$.20?) instead of the sorting machine. "DO NOT BEND" is for the delivery person to not cram the envelope into the mailbox.

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    1. Thanks, that's useful to know so I'll keep it in mind. The thing is, like I mentioned, I DID pay extra when I chose the option that denoted that I had a "non-bendable" item in the PWE, but the USPS blatantly ignored it anyway because they're a bunch of idiots, so that option is no guarantee--as with anything else when using USPS, it's luck of the draw....

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