Sending Larger Items

[akillgallon]

Hello!

While I'm not new to TTM Autograph Collecting, I do have a question!

I've had great success over the years with requesting photos and have received some amazing things. Well, over the years my wife and I have come in contact with a large amount of Mini Disney Posters & Prints. They've been stored away and we thought how cool it would be to send them out to get signed. I've collected all the addresses, poster tubes from the post office, and went to send the first batch this morning. The woman at the post office said that while I'm able to reuse the poster tube for return, she would not be able to have me prepay for the return service and that the person I'm sending it to would have to pay upon sending the item. According to her, it would be different with flat rate mail but because the tubes provided from the post office are priority mail, she's not able to include the postage for the return.

This seems weird to me. Has anyone else run into this issue?

How do you send an item that cannot have normal stamps?

[Hartster]

Let me see if I understand the issue by providing a solution, since I send out books to be signed all the time:

Weigh the poster tube with the poster and a letter of request in it at a self-service kiosk. Buy the postage through the machine. Put the postage on the tube. (Even if it's Flat Rate there are options for buying the postage.)

Put the letter of request in an envelope (probably negligible added weight) addressed to the person on the outside of the tube. Make sure the tube is addressed to you. Wrap the thing in brown kraft paper, address it to the person, bring it to the Post Office and give it to a clerk who will weigh it and tell you how much postage will cost.

The person gets your poster tube. Rips off the kraft paper, sees the LOR. Reads it, signs the poster and returns it. All that's left is for the person to drop it off or have it picked up by the mail carrier.

Having said all that, I've had just one person tell me that because the return postage was bought at a different PO than where it was mailed, that it was a problem. Otherwise, I've never had a situation where I've had to pay postage again, or the person had to pat the postage.

Regardless, I would not send anything in a poster tube because how do you include a roll of tape for the person to seal the tube for its return trip? (Yes, I send a roll of package tape with every book I send so the person can seal the box. I get the tape at the dollar store, and tell them not to return the tape.)

[Hartster]

Today I received a non-flat rate Priority Mail SASE. The postage on it was dated 2/15/18 (from a self-serve kiosk.) So either the clerk was mistaken or for some reason did not want to sell you postage.