I just put my first boxpass in the mail. al'Thor was right: it is a PITA! But a couple of things occured to me that must have occured to many others, so help me understand what's wrong with these ideas:

Idea #1: The Perpetual Pass. Robert Ripley reported 50 years ago that if you marched the Chinese nation 4 abreast past a particular point they would never stop marching. Their birth rate exceeds the number of people passing any given point. That is the gist of the perpetual pass. There is no set number of participants. The list just keeps growing and the box keeps passing in perpetuity. You could sign up yourself multiple times; the box would be different each time anyway.

Idea #2: The KISS boxpass. Keep it Simple, which is what I tried (unsucessfully) to do with my Newbie Pass. I get cigars from CBid all the time. If I buy less than 15, they'll come Priority Mail in a small USPS box. I have sent cigars out this way too w/o problem. So if you keep the box small and under 1#, you have the essence of the KISS boxpass. You receive the box with your regular mail and can mail it right back out the same way. No hassles, no PO trips, no lines. Just keep a $3.85 stamp ready for the box. When it comes, turn it around in 1 day. The box could be lined w/ bubble wrap, a little humidification added. Just no tupperdors, no peanuts, and a minimum of sticks.

These ideas are not mutually exclusive, BTW.

What do you think?

They both sound like fun ideas to me... 🙂

chip you are such a whore

The KISS Pass,
Sounds strangely like a hot potato pass, much like Ethans Bouncing Bomb
Later
Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)

IRT the KISS box pass - you don't even have to have a $3.85 stamp on hand. The USPS web site will allow you to print out a shipping label with postage - Click-N-Ship. Affix the label to your box, hand it to your letter carrier, take it to a Post Office or drop it in any collection box. Works great - no standing in a Post Office line. And no, I don't work for them!

---Randy---

good ideas - the KISS is very similar to the bouncing bombs going on now....but about the virtual pass...eventually, the pass host needs to get his box back - I guess you could set a certain amount of time before the box is to be returned..... I like the creativity!!!

I'm glad this thread was topped, 'cause I haven't forgotten about it. I have a Newbie pass going now, so I won't get around to either of these until that finishes up. But I have been thinking about these...

The perpetual pass doesn't really have a host. Now, I may not want to just bundle up 20 cigars to send off with no expectation of recompense. BUT, I bet I could put 2-3 in and find 5-10 others that would want to start this off. So I would send off (say) 3 cigars to a fine BOTL who would add 2-3 to the box and so forth until the box reached its limit. So the initial box would have multiple hosts, none of them expecting to get those same number in return, but all of them could add their names to the list a little further down the line to at least swap out some cigars.

One of the 'problems' with a perpetual boxpass is that so many of you guys want to improve the box; always pass a better box than you receive. That cannot *always* happen in a perpetual pass. What may start off as a bunch of dog rockets would shortly end up being impossibly good cigars thru small steps of incremental improvements.

Since this would be a boxpass without a host, all participants (and kibitzers) would have to police themselves. The pass would last until stolen, or until everyone got so sick of seeing it that no one wants to see the box again!