Clearly, some of our Members are inclined to think these Coupons are mythical things - like the White Rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland" ...

We hasten to assure any of our readers who may feel inclined to share suchlike thoughts that this is not in fact the case. In fact, International Reply Coupons definitely do exist and are sold at most post offices in a very large number of countries all over the world.

Part of the problem seems to be that International Reply Coupons are one item of which post offices all over the world over are prone to run out of stock - so that, like the White Rabbit - one moment they are there, the next moment they are gone!

After World War 2, when international mail order traders began to resume business and the world's first commercially conducted international penpal clubs came into being, it was a changed world in which the free inter-negotiability of a large number of the world's currencies had disappeared for a while. It was not long before a few of the brighter lights of that time perceived that International Reply Coupons offered a tiny chink in the restrictive regulations so widely in force in those days and enabled them to transfer value from one country to another without much formality - for small transactions of various kinds, such as the purchase or sale of philatelic items, foreign magazines, souvenirs, etc.

The price of I.R.C.s always created severe limitations for such transactions, however, because, as indicated above, the I.R.C. invariably costs the purchaser more than it delivers to the recipient in terms of postage, and that has ensured that the main use of I.R.C.s has generally remained that for which they were specifically created; i.e. to spare the recipient of a letter the cost of reply postage when the sender particularly wants some sort of reply.