How to Mail an SD card with Gummy Glue

As of the time of publishing this post, my mailing list has 48 subscribers, up from 7 just a few days ago. Thank you for being a part of this journey with me. All of us set sail together.

In my previous post, I wrote about how I decided to change tactics and mail SD cards to my customers instead of shipping a whole electronic device to them.

Nowadays, SD cards come in three physical sizes. The size that I need has the smallest format called microSD. It weighs almost nothing and would not add any bulk when enclosed in a standard envelope. However, I did not want the SD card to bounce around and get lost inside the envelope or get crushed by the mail sorting machine. I had to figure out how to hold the SD card in place and to protect it.

I began my research by looking for some kind of hard plastic case. While these are common for standard SD cards, they are quite rare for microSD. I did find a few on Amazon. Customer reviews pointed out that the cases felt cheap and flimsy. The material was cloudy and the case popped open if pressure was applied. So, I decided to strike out this idea immediately.

It is normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect SD cards in transit, but I have never seen bubble wrap inside a normal envelope, which made me suspect that this would elevate the rate of delivery failure.

Maybe I could encapsulate the microSD card in heavy weight paper. However, having to rip the paper open by hand is not exactly Wow inducing, and figuring out how to perforate the paper is out of scope.

The alternative is to temporarily attach the microSD card to the letter just as the banks do when they send you a new credit card. It turns out that the adhesive they use is called “gummy glue” and it is widely available.

The plan is to permanently affix a thicker piece of paper somewhere on the letter with regular glue and then use “gummy glue” to temporarily attach the microSD card on top of it.

Three concerns remain. The first one is reliably sourcing authentic SD cards. The second is testing how the card reacts to “gummy glue.” The third is mailing a test envelope to myself to check that the card survives the trip.

I came across bunnie’s blog post about the woes of dealing with counterfeit SD cards. What surprised me the most was not that this problem exists but how widespread it is, given that virtually all big brand name manufacturers are affected. Based on bunnie’s recommendations, I am asking different suppliers how they verify the authenticity of their SD cards. It’s surprising that nobody’s launched a service where they only sell SD cards that were individually tested. If all else fails, I will have to test each card myself.

Mailing the card to myself should be straightforward, and I will do so after choosing the paper, the paper folding pattern, and picking up some “gummy glue.”

A question that looms in the back of my mind is how many SD cards to order. Only the deathless gods know the true answer.

In other news, I plan to announce the product and simultaneously launch the e-commerce store on September 5, 2024. That date should be about 48 hours in advance of the fruit company’s back-to-school marketing campaign launch
and 24 hours before they send out the soft announcement emails.

The e-commerce platform that I will use is Shopify. I would have preferred to choose something else that I could self-host such as WooCommerce, but time is precious and I scored a discount code.

Stay tuned and subscribe to the mailing list!

In my next post, I write about “smart cards,” customs duties, and publishing on YouTube.

This blog post was submitted to Hacker News. Read the comments here.