Cheapskate brothers exchange same birthday card for 36 years

Darryl and Dan Culberson were cheapskates before it was cool. And they can prove it.

The two brothers have been exchanging the same birthday card since 1973.

Every January, Darryl drops it in the mail heading to Dan's home outside Boulder. And a few months later, the card makes its way back to Colorado Springs for Darryl's March 7 birthday.

The yellowed card is covered with pithy greetings that are now snaking down the back cover. Its fraying edges are held together by tape and the stubbornness of two brothers.

Darryl, 62, insists that his older brother, 68, is "the cheapest person I've ever met," and he's not far behind.

That's what inspired him to buy the card the year they decided to stop exchanging birthday presents.

On the outside it reads, "Here it is! Just another card for your birthday!" Inside, a masked bandit on a motorcycle rides beneath the words "The Phantom Cheapo strikes again!"

Dan thought it would be funny to send the same card back, one-upping his brother's cheapo move. And a tradition was born.

Thus, a card survives that was printed the year the Watergate scandal unfolded, Elvis played his famous live concert in Hawaii and the World Trade Center opened.

It's never been lost in the mail, and the Phantom Cheapo - true to its name - was even delivered last year when it didn't have enough postage.

The brothers have their differences. Darryl seems more melancholy while Dan is more upbeat. Darryl lives in the house their parents owned, while Dan is 100 miles to the north.

Dan is an atheist while Darryl is a Christian.

Yet even when they're fighting, they never fail to send the card. Darryl Culberson thought he lost the card only once, when it was stuffed between other papers in a desk drawer.

"It was terrible. I was really upset about that," he said as he looked at the card. "We always kid each other about what we're going to do when we run out of space. And we hope that it stays together enough until we die."

At first, they simply signed their names, and one brother would cross out the signature of the other when he sent it back. Then they added messages.

Darryl, 1987: "What are we going to do when we run out of room?"

Dan, 1987: "One of us will have to break down and buy a new card!"

This year, Dan called the newspaper, and there was a story about the card in the Boulder Daily Camera. His message to Darryl was, "I got an interview! Did you?"

Too bad, bro; you haven't bested him yet.