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Hi! I´m not very good explaining as my english is far from perfect, but I will try my best. It will take a long message to explain, but I´m always glad to help a fellow collector. If you don´t understand any part feel free to ask.
In first place, I must say autograph collecting by mail can be difficult sometimes, and a key for getting a good collection is a lot of patience. Normally a response will take 3-6 months, but sometimes it takes a year or more, depending on the celebrity. Keep in mind that they receive hundreds of mails, and that some celebrities always send pre-printed photos or secretarials.
Now, to your question. I do it like this and as you can see I always have success. You must have the following:
- A picture, but be careful what you send, do not send a valuable item because you may never see it again. The size of the picture is your choice (most common sizes are 15x20 cms or 25x30 cms). The best is download a nice image from google which is at least 1024x768 and JPG, copy it to a pendrive and get it developed at a photographic lab. Two pictures would be fine, but three is too much, depending on the celebrity.
- Two envelopes, one self-adressed big enough to fit the photo without bending (I recomend a padded one to protect the photo from being bent or broken by the postman) and other big enough to put into it the self addressed one.
- A letter of request. You have always to be polite and tell the actor/singer/etc wich films/songs/etc do you like, and ask if he/she can sign your item. This is personal and everyone write different things, so I´ll let you decide what to write, but be sincere: most celebritys can see a "forced-only to get a free autograph" letter coming from miles ago and you could get no response.
- Now, for the postage thing, a complicated part. You didn´t tell me which country are you from. In my case I´m from Spain (Europe) but most actors/bands I like are from USA, so I cannot send spanish stamps as it would not be valid there and I wouldn´t get response. This is an important thing because without postage, almost all celebrities will not respond for sure. You must go to your postal office and ask for IRCs (International Response Coupons). The purpose of the IRC is to allow a person to send someone in another country a letter, along with the cost of postage for a reply. Here is well explained:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon
Remember that you must send at least 2 IRCs per photo, depending on it´s size, and that IRCs in some countries are a little expensive.
OK, now the easy part. Put the photo and IRCs on your self addresed envelope, but DO NOT close it. Put your self addressed envelope and the letter inside the bigger one with the address of the celebrity, close it and send it. I usually send them from the postal office which is easier as you don´t have to put stamps on it (so you can avoid problems calculating postage).
And this is all. I have wrote to UK, USA, France, Sweden and lots of other countries, even Australia using IRCs and they always worked fine. If you are from Europe and you want to write to USA, you also have the choice of going to a bank and get Euros changed for US Dollars. Most banks won´t charge for it. I sent some requests with dollars and they also worked (always using bills, not coins!) but on my postal office they insist that is not recomended to send money.
Hope it will be of help to you.
Best wishes!