I was getting really excited for August. I had some nights planned to hang out with some friends and the family was starting to do some thing. We were even planning a little vacation sort of. One of those let’s go some place, pair it with looking at some schools for my oldest daughter, and do a few things. Well, that’s not working out and with some restrictions coming back, will it really be as fun? Plus we can’t all tour schools because some places limit how many people can be on a tour.
I still have some stuff with friends planned as one of my buddies is coming into town this week. But I think my favorite thing coming up this weekend is a gig for my band. Unfortunately it’s indoors and that might mean it’s our last gig for a while, but we’d gotten back to practicing and it’s been really fun to hang out and play. The pizza place we’re playing out is really fun so I’m hoping that will go well.
Hopefully you are getting back to doing some things. But no matter what, just stay safe and make good decisions.
The Monthly Numbers
I feel like I’ve been saying this over the last few months a bit more, or at least maybe feeling it, but this month felt different as I went through it versus what it feels like as I look at the numbers. It felt a lot like previous months with the total returns. I think that was really because the totals were very much the same as previous months until I got to the last couple days.
But when you look at the numbers below, I had a day with seven successes (and two failures), three days with five returns, and three other days with four returns. When I look at it that way it looks really good. But then I think about getting twelve successes over the last two days and I realize that I kind of got saved by those two days.
The mail issues that I keep seeing don’t help the feeling I get during the month either. Mondays tend to be a problem where I don’t get the returns Informed Delivery says I’ll get. That’s if I get the mail at all.
There’s really not a whole lot of color in this map. I’ve been sending out A TON of baseball lately and you’re seeing that in the results below (as you will with other graphics).
Something I mentioned the other day in a Review / Preview post, but I’m really loving how I’m tending to get back cards that I recently got in pick ups. If you interest in seeing where that’s impacting the below, it happens on the ends of the spectrum. The cards I got from a neighbor are very focus on mid-90’s and up, but mostly that ’97-’03 range. And then the cards I got from some card shows in the Spring were really pre-1980.
New York held it down this month. With all the teams you can choose from for New York City you would think this would be at the top more often than not. But if you follow these posts frequently you know that’s not the case and the smaller markets have had some big showings.
But this is the second month in a row with some of the bigger cities bringing it home. That said, Cincinnati and Baltimore snuck into the top five this month. Baltimore is definitely pesky – that’s all Orioles all the time because I don’t have much of anything else.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Houston Astros – 13
- Baltimore Orioles – 12
- New York Mets – 12
- New York Yankees – 11
- Toronto Blue Jays – 10
- Los Angeles / California Angels – 9
- Montreal Expos – 9
- St. Louis Cardinals – 9
- Cincinnati Reds – 8
- Philadelphia Phillies – 8
Getting Trendy
61 returns isn’t that much more than last month, but it is more. And while it doesn’t feel like a lot (based on how I started the year) I can’t even tell you how good it felt to clear 60. Even that slight trend going up made this month feel a lot better than it might have seemed for most of the month. As I said those last two days with twelve returns look like they save the month. The failures stayed up a bit too compared to what I was getting in other slower months, but it was a lot like last month.
I told you we’d see how much baseball is ruling everything. Of course it does for me usually. I’m thinking that maybe some of my issue of not getting as many returns back is that I need to diversify by sport a bit more. It’s not like all baseball players get together and decide to slow things down. Maybe it’s not a “correlation is not causation” type of thing, but it feels like that.
Well, I fixed the mistake I had for the last report. It’s wasn’t a big one in that it changed the look of the line, but it was a big number change and it looked like I had half of the total I had in June. I’m not getting a lot so cutting a chunk out is no bueno.
The Overall Numbers
So this felt like a better month overall. It turns out that the numbers say it that’s sort of the case. From a returns perspective it was, but from a cards perspective it wasn’t. I think I’m more worried about the returns so that going up helps my mental state, but 61 returns with 205 cards is good with me. Hopefully that can continue to trend up.
For the Year-Over-Year, things are looking up. I think since I started off the year so well it was kind of bound to be better. I was over 10% better for the month than this time last year and overall I think I’m at about a 25% better than last year pace. From a returns and cards back pace I am about where I was in October last year. Not too shabby I think.
He’s Making a List
As always there’s a few stragglers on the list. The ones that I always find funny among these are the failures. I got Joe Rudi back with a note about going to PastPros.com. That’s not an issue, I just find it funny that it takes such a long time to end up with that response. I think we all would pretty much write them off at that point. Given I send doubles I’m not worried about the cards. I guess if you didn’t it would be different, but not getting them back is the risk.
Here the list of anything over 200 days:
- Rodney Holman – 877
- Steve Trout – 501
- Joe Rudi – 437 (Failure)
- Ray Childress – 334
- Randy Kutcher – 235
There were definitely some that I really liked this month and a few surprises. Paul Assenmacher was a surprise because I really thought he was charging these days. Of course the stragglers above are always a surprise too. But some the ones I liked or came out the best were Justin De Fratus, Blaine Beatty, Dave Dravecky, Jeff Kunkel, Mark McLemore, Jon Matlack, Mike Bordick, Eddie Zosky and Ron Hextall.
I hope you had a good hobby month too!