Hope Diamond was his paternal grandmother. She didn’t survive the trip. They forgot to poke air holes in her crate. He had lived with her and was left alone, hence SOLITARY MAN. I read this online somewhere so it must be true.
Don’t cheap out on the envelope, and make sure it’s securely sealed.
Slightly off topic, but still relevant. A number of years ago I managed a project at the Post Office in the UK, introducing automated mailing machines which would weight your item and sell you a “stamp”. Doing research for what sort of products people would consider using such a machine for, we found an odd spike in the amount of Special Delivery mail coming from some very specific, small areas in London. Special Delivery is a highly-secure mail service offered in the UK, which is largely separate from ordinary mail to ensure that security, and consequently the Royal Mail will issue insurance for mail sent via Special Delivery, for a fee. You can specify a service to arrive by 9am the next morning, or just “next day”.
Upon enquiry, the areas with the extraordinarily high use of Special Delivery in London were around Hatton Garden, traditionally the jewelry and diamond-trading center. Diamonds are eminently portable and Special Delivery very secure. Gem merchants had figured out it was cheaper to box their stock and mail it to themselves by 9am Special Delivery, than to insure their own premises and store the rocks overnight. Very clever indeed.
Many years ago, during the blockade, I sent a few packages from the US to Cuba. They always arrived. One postal clerk mentioned that he had never mailed a package to Cuba.
IIRC a bank building in Wyoming was built of bricks mailed by parcel post because it was cheaper than freight charges. The post office changed their rules after that.
When I left Ethiopia, I had some local money left over, so I mailed it to my family-run hotel as a tip, with an extra usd-5 in there. A month later I get a plastic postal bag marked “no such address”. In the bag was my envelope, slit open on three sides dangling by a flap. And a couple hundred birr and five bucks, intact.