I got to go back to a card show again!
I’m sure there’s been plenty out there, but I got out of the habit of looking. The good thing though is that it appears that a regular one (maybe every month or two) is back on. I’m trying to make sure the dates get on my calendar so I can head back if I have the extra cash.
While I’m excited for the show, there’s really only one table that I stop at (though I’m proud of myself for checking out two this time), and that’s the 10-cent, 25-cent, 50-cent table guy. I hit those boxes pretty hard and came out with some good stuff. And I didn’t even get through all of them. I pretty much know he’ll be back and I’m going to take a crack at them again. Hopefully I will remember where I wrote down which years I went through (he pretty much organizes and prices by year).
This time was slightly different though. For one, I wasn’t the only one diving in. His tables were pretty popular especially with guys older than I am who were filling out sets. As I was shuffling through cards I heard him mention that this was maybe the busiest he’s ever seen the whole show and that counts when they did it prior. I know they parking lot gets packed and they have to set up another space to let people park. It was pretty damn busy and that’s from me who doesn’t pick his head up from the tables too much.
The other thing I noticed is that me and two other guys are going through these boxes and the conversation at the next table over these guys were talking about a deal for cards in the thousand dollar range. Here’s we are talking about cents and they are talking big bucks (too me anyway).
Beyond just the idea that this was tables next to each other, it made me just think about how much you can make this hobby what you want and there’s other folks out there for you. I think we could consider these two tables almost as two separate hobbies with how different they were, but in the end there’s probably a lot of the middle ground throughout the rest of the show. And it’s also all cards right?
Anyway, hope you are getting out to some fun shows and keep diggin’ in them boxes for whatever you consider to be gold!
The Monthly Numbers
“From the moon, to Pluto, back down to Earth…” – Ol’ Dirty Bastard
That quote from ODB was a bit how I felt February went. Not throughout the month, but how it sits with the the last few months of TTM collecting. I was going higher and higher and I knew it all had to come back down. I just didn’t think it was going to crash. I think crash is a bit of hyperbole, but its all relative right.
I had one super big day right in the middle of the month, then another a little later in the month. But look at some of the blank spots there at the end. There weren’t any snow days that caused those like they did in January. Didn’t feel too great. The beginning of the month was a lot of small daily totals. Consistent but a huge change from where January was.
The Heat Map is pretty much completely back to “normal” last month, at least in the middle. I guess instead of saying “normal” I should say its where I would expect it. With the sports other than baseball driving that middle spike I probably won’t ever get away from that. But the double spike in baseball is still there. Since I did just go to another car show so hopefully there will be some kind of skew to the left side soon.
I saw two months of pretty gradual charts for the cities, but as look at these it seems like February went back to having some plateaus. Los Angeles was the clear winner. St. Louis really surprised me coming in second though. I don’t normally get a ton of Cardinals cards, but I think it was the Blues cards that really helped contribute to that. Philadelphia is another place that surprises me because I would think I would send out more Phillies in general but somehow I just don’t.
You can see below how the Top 10 teams that came back were a bit more tightly groups with thirteen teams being within five of each other. And there’s those teams I don’t tend to see as much with the Phillies tied at the top spot and Cardinals right behind them. I think Detroit can be in that mix as well, but I think they appear a little bit more than the others. Otherwise the Rangers, Astros, Indians, and Mariners all feel like the usual players on this list. I do like seeing some football teams even if they are at the bottom of the list.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Detroit Tigers – 13
- Philadelphia Phillies – 13
- Texas Rangers – 13
- St. Louis Cardinals – 12
- Houston Astros – 11
- Cleveland Indians – 10
- Seattle Mariners – 10
- Oakland Athletics – 9
- Five tied with 8 – Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles/California Angels, Pittsburgh Pirates
Getting Trendy
Well, that’s a pretty drastic trend my friends. I knew going into the year I was going to send out less. I’m definitely doing that. But it’s really not that much less than to me. And I would also say that I’m kind of at the end of some of the things I planned to send out and that normally brings in less. But even then, I’ve done a good job at mitigating that when I learned to send more out based on what others are getting back. So I really think that February was just a bad month form me.
I think I was thinking that I would be maybe in the 90’s for returns. I was at 76. And the failures were at a bit higher percentage with six for the month. That’s less than the nine in January, but definitely not less by the same percentage.
I talked about this a bit for January. I’m also expecting the totals for the other sports to go down. They did this month, but this was a bit more in line with what I expected to see from a decline in these trending graphs. I’m trying to work what I have left in a bit more, but there just not a lot left for me to send in my “piles”.
Another big decline is for the cards that came back too. Still a good amount though with 258 cards total. I think this is another place where I’ll see a decline as it relates to my other sports. Since my pile is lower and I’m down to the last things to send, that usually means its the guys I have less cards for because I prioritize the guys I have more cards for.
The Overall Numbers
In February I had 76 returns and six failures. That’s almost 50 returns less than January getting close to a 40% drop in returns from month to month. I really hope that doesn’t continue into March. Unfortunately the card totals are almost the same where I went from 407 cards back to 258, also an almost 40% drop. I think generally it makes sense that those are pretty much the same.
I knew going into last month there was the possibility of going under last years totals and seeing that in the Year-over-Year perspective. The 76 returns for February was almost ten percent less than February last year and 258 cards was just over ten percent less than last year. From a pace perspective though, I am 26% over in returns from where I was after two months last year and over 20% better in cards. But those numbers will keep going down. Hopefully just slowly until they get destroyed at the end of the year.
He’s Making a List
For the stragglers list, the total went down and there definitely wasn’t anything as drastic in January. I definitely wrote off that Johnny Damon. The Scott Hemond I had as well because I saw him return things earlier and I didn’t get anything back. Then I tried again, so I ended up getting both returns back.
Here the list of anything 200 days or more:
- Johnny Damon – 758
- Scott Hemond – 482
- Frank Reich – 454
- Rex Hudler – 363
The other list I’ll include from last month were the paid returns that I ended up getting back. There were some pretty good ones in there, but also so that at one time I never thought I would pay for. I guess that’s the addiction to the TTM hobby coming out.
- Stan Bahnsen – $10 – 4 cards
- Ron Guidry – $20 – 4 cards
- Whitey Herzog – $20 – 4 cards
- Rick Wise – $10 – 2 cards (but he did say he charges $7 per)
- Pat Putnam – $25 – 5 cards
- Reggie Cleveland – $10 – 4 cards
I hope things are going well – many happy returns!