Over the past 12 months, for most of us those little non-descript envelopes which contain credit card solicitations aren’t showing up in our mailbox as often. However this doesn’t appear to be the case for a Chicago-area family. They decided to save all their credit card offers they received in the mail over the course of a year. The result? 23 lbs of wasted paper, over 445 different envelopes containing credit card applications. Whether it was an airline reward card, 0% balance transfer credit card offer, or virtually any other type – it was all there.

The father and husband of the family, Gary Silbar, observed that the biggest peddlers were Chase, Citi, and Amex. In fact, roughly 25% were from Chase alone. In the third quarter of 2008 there was a 28% decline in credit card offers when compared to the year before.  However that still leaves over 1.34 billion card offers that were mailed out during the third quarter this year. The difference is that now, creditors seem to only be targeting those with the best credit, like the Silbar family.

And what did these banks get in return for spending several hundred dollars on sending the Silbars these credit card offers? Absolutely nothing – no new card signups. No wonder the banks are broke when they’re wasting money like that!