Does the post office only lose the expensive stuff?

My daugther's Latin textbooks arrived yesterday. Sort of.  What arrived was an empty bubble envelope with one end completely open.  Nice, eh?  I mean, it was like saying, "See - we are competent enough to get the envelope to your door!  Oh, you actually wanted the $120 worth of textbooks inside. Sheesh.  You can't have everything!"

Now, if I had purchased these books, I could just go back to the supplier and tell them they needed to replace them.  That is how business works.  However, this wasn't a business transaction.  These were loaner books from dd's teacher in CO.  The loss was a double whammy.  The teacher lost one of her classroom sets and I now have to go purchase the books because she had a very limited number of sets to loan.  She actually only had one near-complete set and dd was to get them because she was the first registered for her class.  Now all the used textbooks on the market have been snatched up and I have to purchase these babies brand spankin' new.  Bleh.

I called the PO and informed them of my plight. They weren't insured.  However, they do have some sort of investigation system for lost items.  I'm not overly optimistic. The woman on the other end of the phone took various bits of information such as sender's address, arriving addresses, value, and description of items. "Do you expect foul play?" the woman asked.

"Who would steal Latin textbooks?", I asked.

Come on, it's not like someone is going to see a Latin book sticking out of a package and say, "Hey, I think my kid would like to hear Vergil's Aeneid for a bedtime story tonight!"  Or, "Oh wow - Latin.  I think I'll brush up on my Latin for my next trip to, ah...Ancient Rome."  No, I informed her, I think what is more likely is the PO decided to target this package for their random media mail check and didn't seal the package back up properly.

Now, let me say this.  In all the years of shipping items back and forth, whether it is eBay transactions, sold homeschool materials, or gifts being sent to out-of-town relatives, the PO has only lost three packages of mine.  Actually, that is a pretty good ratio.  However, they only seem to be interested in losing the expensive stuff.  The first MIA package was an airline ticket.  The second was another $100+ book set (that I sold and then forgot to insure, though the buyer purchased insurance...I had to suck it up and come up with a replacement).  Now expensive Latin texts.  All the great offers for credit cards, Christmas cards from people I no longer speak to, and requests for money graduation announcements of relatives across the country that I hardly know....those all make it to my mailbox without a dent or scratch.

So, I now have an "Investigation Claim Number" and I am told someone will contact me in 24-48 with news on whether or not they have located my items.  I suspect I'll be $120 poorer in 48 hours.