Seven different BREs show up in massive mail haul

Last month, my family and I were on a trip away from home for about a week and a half. When we got back, our post office box and home mailbox were stuffed absolutely full of mail including a big stack of nonprofit mailings. Many of those had colorful business reply envelopes enclosed, no fewer than seven of which were new to me! I’ll get through these as quickly as possible.

First up is an unusually small business reply envelope from Shriners Children’s. The front of this envelope has two preprinted stamp-sized images depicting a teddy bear. This is a design Shriners has used since at least as early as November 2022, but the original version had a blue background while the new version is red.

Shriners also sent a mailing containing an envelope with three different designs picturing a snowman, a house, and a deer printed on it. Unlike the first entry, this envelope is a standard size.

Next is a BRE from Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch. This example, which features three designs picturing floral arrangements, is the fifth different business reply envelope I’ve received from this organization this year.

Fourth, we have a debut appearance from the Society of the Little Flower, which appropriately used four copies of a pink flower design of its own on this envelope.

National Jewish Health distributed a BRE featuring two copies of each of two images of children dressed as medical professionals. These designs have simulated printed die cutting which does make them look a bit more like stamps.

Operation Smile used new variants of artwork that appeared on a BRE that I reported from a September mailing, but without simulated die cutting to make the designs appear to be coil stamps. Additionally, the first two of the designs have been modified from that earlier envelope: on the first, the dove now faces to the left rather than to the right, and on the second, all four tiers of the Christmas tree appear to be the same shade of green.

And finally, an Edmundite Missions mailing included a business reply envelope with four designs that looked familiar. That’s because they originally showed up on a BRE enclosed in a May 2024 mailing, but on that envelope, all the designs were printed in blue rather than the purples and dark red that we see here.

Whew! That was quite a haul, and quite a list to work our way through. That does, however, bring us up to speed, at least for now. We’ll see what the post office box holds when I go to check it this week, then go from there.

Published 2024-11-04 Last updated 2025-01-06