Is it ok to mail a magnet?

December 20, 2007 11:30 AM

Is it ok to mail a thin magnet along with a card in the regular mail? Do I have to do anything special to it?

I realize this is quite possibly a Very Stupid Question, but no one in my dept at work can answer me, and I tried googling it but I kept getting pages upon pages about some sort of "email magnet". So...please try not to yell at me if this is as stupid a question as I think it might be.

Basically, I made some cute calendars on card stock that I want to slip into those thin magnetic picture frames and mail to a few family members along with a Happy New Year card.

I guess I'm just concerned that there might be some issue with mailing it ... like the entire envelope sticking to the inside of the mailbox or sticking to someone else's mail or breaking the mail machines. I'm not smart or knowledgeable enough to know whether these concerns are totally stupid, or somewhat plausible.

I do know that people do from time to time mail magnets, I just can't remember if they do anything, like wrap them in tinfoil or whatever, before sending them.

What do you think?

posted by tastybrains to grab bag (7 comments total)

I get thin magnets in the mail frequently as promos. They are sometimes wrapped in the accompanying letter, sometimes not.
posted by desuetude at 11:34 AM on December 20, 2007

Ditto. You should be fine. Wrap or don't wrap based on the aesthetics of what you're mailing.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 11:40 AM on December 20, 2007

If it's too rigid, you have to pay the non-machinable surcharge ($0.12). In theory.
posted by smackfu at 11:43 AM on December 20, 2007

Thanks, all. They're not rigid, they're more bendable than the card I'm sending them with. It's basically a thin magnet with a thin plastic pocket to hold the photo / calendar in place.
posted by tastybrains at 11:45 AM on December 20, 2007

I think that in the era where people used to mail floppy disks through the mail, sending magnets through the mail wouldn't have been very nice. But magnetic computer media are obsolete now.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:12 PM on December 20, 2007

Should be fine so long as they're not very strong. Neodymium magnets can erase credit cards and stick to things quite well, so they tend to be packed so the strongest part of the field doesn't extend outside the packaging. This normally means putting them in a cardboard box; yay inverse square law.

Your magnets probably aren't that strong. If in doubt, even a thin bit of cardboard on the back should help a lot.
posted by Freaky at 12:55 PM on December 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

If the letter can stick to the fridge closed, I would put something in-between the magnet. I have a friend who worked in the post office and she said that someone once put a super strong magnet in an envelope and it took an hour to disentangle the resulting pile-up of letters from the machine.
posted by agregoli at 2:58 PM on December 20, 2007