Messing with the post office
 

I saw this and immediate thought of Crack and the Nigerian scammers!

http://monkeyfaq.com/mail/index.html

Interesting. If I understand the pictures correctly, it seems they kept the coins intact, but took the tip?

So was postage free as a result of the tip being taken, thus damaging the envelope?

That's the way I figured it too.

that's the government for you ,skim the fat and miss the meat.....xoxoxoo

naw, here's what probably happened:

Postal workers aren't allowed to accept tips. For some reason this dude was willing to risk disciplinary action for a nickel. But if he left the "here's a tip for your troubles" part on the envelope, he might get in trouble. So he tore that corner of the envelope off and dropped it in a "we damaged your mail" envelope, which does not require postage.

As to why he didn't take the 39 cents, I dunno, other than maybe he saw it was a joke and decided to play along ;)

in fact, to add to shakran's conjecture, i'd bet the reason he took that part of the envelope and tip is so he could show it to friends at home or whatnot. in what might be a boring job, that's a pretty good story.

shakran & pigglet, those are pretty good angels, I guess we will never know, that adds to the story. Thanks guys!

I'm going to say that the machine tore the nickel off. Most mail is presorted by machine, those that get rejected get sorted by hand.

I wonder if people will send Ilya some junk mail now that he's left his picture with his return address on it. Maybe we could turn him into the new Craig Shergold.