It is a plastic oval, with a window that displays a 7 digit number.
If you Google ColdKase, you find that it is a direct mail communications company.
But no clue as to the function of this thing in my mailbox.
Does it allow me to enter a lottery?
There was nothing with it, explaining what it is all about.
Then I’m going to have to say that someone screwed up.
From their web site:
Without telling you where to go, I don’t see much use in it.
It’s a trap!
I think I just found a use for all those broken SecurID tokens. 
Moved Cafe Society --> MPSIMS.
Seems like the stupidest, most over-engineered way possible of sending someone a hidden seven digit number. What does this do that a scratchcard can’t?
And I love that the ‘How It Works’ page of the site says nothing at all about… you know… how it works.
It was loose, in your mailbox, not in an envelope? It’s common internet knowledge (i.e., may or may not be true) that it’s illegal to put non-mail in a mailbox. Let your postmaster know.
Joe
It’s spies.
It’s always spies.
But it is never, ever, lupus.
It might be a terrorist bomb – report them to Homeland Security – perhaps they will be rendited or waterboarded or whatever it is that is done to terrorists that instead should be done to junk mailers and telemarketers.
The thing is nothing more than an LED and two batteries. The number printed on the ‘screen’ is the same on every single one, of course, so is the number on the card the thing should have been attached to, and the scratchoff. They’re not gonna pay for unique numbers, that would cost too much to print.
See one gutted;
http://imgur.com/a/5YPHL
If you can remove the batteries they might be of some use in other devices, however, it looks like they might be welded onto the wires.
Report it to Boston PD. They freaked out over a Lite Brite.
It has “perceived value.”
At least, for morons who don’t recognize what it really is.
Still does. I have one that I use to scan ISBNs into Readerware. (Well, I haven’t in a while, but someday, once more … it’d be nice to get out of the Cs.)
Not true. There are unique numbers and someone just won $10,000 from getting one in the mail.
See story here: http://codekase.com/in-news/