Are You Spending Too Much on Fanmail?

[traceymichelle]

My mom thinks I am spending too much of my money on fanmail when I usually only get 50% of it back. I don't have a job so I don't make a lot of money like some adults do. I won't say anything about me, but I am not an adult. My mom won't use her money on my fanmail obsession. Is there anyway to lower the cost of what I send?

I send:
A letter
usually a small envelope with SAE inside
an occasional magazine picture

I want to increase my chances but not spend a lot. Stamps are so expensve now. I know this is not an easy to answer question since what I send is already reduced. My main question is: who else has this issue?

Hi! You could always check the official site of whom you are writing and see if there is a way to email them from there. I've emailed three people in the past week and have gotten responses saying it will be in the mail soon. The worst they can say is no or give you the snail mail address. I've also gotten a reply using a myspace message as well...granted I've only requested one, but apparently I was funny enough to be granted a reply! Let me know how it works out!

Tracey

[orangelazarus]

I think it can be an expensive hobby, but not that expensive in comparison to other hobbies. Think about kids that do horsebackriding, golfing, scrapbooking, photography, even video games. Those can be much more expensive. At least that's how I rationalize it in my mind.

[Autograph Fanatic]

I agree with everyone. It is not that expensive of a hobby comapared to others. I only send out letters unless I am writing VV, and I get about 90% successes. I say look at past successes on the people you want to send to, and see if the people had to send an SASE or not.


Thanks,
A.F.

[Atomic ant]

Yes this is a very expensive hobby, I can easily spend £20-25 ($40-50) per month on postage.
And a lot more then that, if I send outside the UK.

Sending even the smallest letter, to the U.S.A, would put you back over £1/$2 and this goes up per 0.3 oz (10 grams) of weigh. So weigh, and size is everything.

I'm sure the UK, postage system, is the world most expensive just like everything else in England.

Anyway, to try to help you out, please try to send letters, when you have the stamp money. I know it's hard, but even just one letter per week, could quickly build up and you may, surprize yourself with the number of nice replys you get {thumb2} {thumb2}

All the best.

[Pencebaseball9]

What I do is I limit myself. I make a plan of who I am really interested in and do the research to check their positive feedback rate so I don't waste any stamps. If I know I need to send a SASE I will, but if others have shown they don't use it then I won't.

My parents don't really care what I do as far as this hobby goes. They think it's cool and I'm almost 18 so yea.

[Smuck]

Well my mom and grandparents love this hobby of mine. When I get something in the mail, my mom is so anxious to see what I got. I can tell she wants to open it but doesn't. I get to open it but then she's right there breathing on me to see what I got.

If I don't have any money directly on hand, my mom will certainly pay for what I have to mail. That's nice, but I always try to pay for what I send out. Occasionally, I have to have her do it. I need to pay her back.

I spend quite a bit but I always try to pay for it. My mom doesn't care and I have some extra money so not really.

[truexillusions]

I think it depends on how often you send. If you space it out and only send to people you really want autographs from, you should be fine.

[cernan]

My TTM Success Rate is about: 69.4%. In this hobby, that is considered fairly high.

I don't spend a lot of time on fanmail. What I do is only write to those individuals that I am big fans of. I don't send out as many requests as some people on this forum, but the ones that I do send out, I try and include an SASE whenever possible. Because I limit the number of people I sent to every year, I am pretty well off money wise.

[10900228]

what I do is send out only one per week. I know sounds like a little but there are people on this board that send out 20 in a week and nothing else for 3 months so I think I will get around the same # of autos as they do. If you spread out when you send them you also spread out the costs.I also like doing it this way so I get autos every week instead of geting 10 in a month and nothing for several months

[Justinsdad]

I have that problem too.

If you ask the celebrity nicely to get two autographs as you cannot afford to continue collecting if you get however much you get, so could they send you two and then you sell it for $5 on E-bay, give $2.50 to a charity pot and then $2.50 is enough to get a pack of stamps in the UK, if you include 33p

Are you serious? You do this?