Somebody wants to buy my house, and I didn’t even have to put up a sign or call a real estate agent.

Or beg.

I just had to open my mailbox.

Which, of course, is the source of most fantastic financial opportunities.

I’d probably be retired now, dividing my time between a mountain chalet and a beach cabana and commuting by corporate jet and helicopter, if only I had the courage to fill out a few forms and return the self-addressed stamped envelope.

Instead I rip the mailings in half and banish a carefree, independently wealthy future to the trash can beside my driveway.

(I rarely bother to even bring these items inside my house for a thorough perusal, so comfortable am I in my cynicism.)

This recent letter, though, is the first inquiry I have received about selling my most valuable possession.

(Albeit one for which I still have some years of mortgage payments.)

Some years back my mail occasionally brought an offer from a car dealership in Idaho that, or so I gathered, had a nearly pathological need to acquire our 2008 Toyota FJ Cruiser.

These missives were larded with exclamation points and phrases rendered in capital letters — the written equivalent to screaming in someone’s face.

The gist was that our rig, which we bought in January of 2008, had retained so much of its value that we were all but obliged, by any reasonable economic standard, to cash in.

None of these offers said so, but it seemed to me that the dealership was trying to shame me — to imply that holding onto our Toyota was comparable to refusing to buy U.S. war bonds in 1942.

The enticement was tempting, to be sure.

The FJ Cruiser, which Toyota stopped selling in the U.S. in 2014, after eight model years, boasts an unusually small depreciation.

Some of these sales pitches listed a figure — I never bothered to check whether it was legitimate — that was awfully close to what we paid a decade or more earlier. And even accounting for the inflation that has plagued vehicle transactions (and, of course, pretty much everything else), the proceeds from our FJ would have amounted to a hefty down payment on a new vehicle.

But we never seriously considered doing the deal.

(Among other things, it’s much easier to deflect a sales pitch that shows up in your mailbox than one that comes from across a desk in a showroom.)

The absence of a monthly payment — something else that appears in the mailbox, or more often these days an inbox — is a powerful incentive, too.

The offer to buy our house, by contrast, was purely entertainment.

I’m not so confident in my analytical skills as to claim I can’t be hoodwinked.

(Although the Nigerian royalty hasn’t gotten me yet.)

But it seems to me that a considerable level of naivete is necessary to convince somebody that legitimate real estate transactions start with the sort of postal pitch normally associated with high-interest credit cards and super-fast internet.

Also, although my mathematical acumen started to fray not long after letters started showing up in my homework equations along with the familiar numbers, I’m familiar enough with my property tax bill to know that the offer in the letter wasn’t so much low as it was insulting.

If I were to go the usual route and enlist a Realtor, I suspect the figure on the sales brochure would be about four times what my mail correspondent was proposing to pay.

Regardless, I’m no more eager to swap houses than I am to swap vehicles.

I’m curious, though, about whether — and I suspect this is the case — this will be the first in a series of such letters.

The purveyors of such campaigns seem to rely on volume to offset what is, in effect, an absurd precept.

The shotgun approach.

Based on the offer in my letter, and the potential profit margin, whoever’s running this operation wouldn’t need many successes to pay the postage.