This month I finally buckled down and did a refresh of my TTM cards. I resorted and dug through my doubles to find some new names. Hopefully they show up in the coming months. But I also know I’m working through my backlog with posts so you might not see them for a while unless they happen to pop up in a theme I am working on for my posts.
It’s one of those things that I love doing, but at the same time it’s a lot of work. I just have so many boxes to go through and moving them back and forth. Plus with family stuff going on, I never really get to just sit down and do it all. I’m kind of doing it in pieces all the time. But again, I do enjoy it. That’s especially when I get to pull out some cards for new guys who I don’t have cards signed for.
How do you all refresh your TTM stacks to send out? Do you do it all at once? Do you do it little by little? Do you do it more on-demand? I’m interested in hearing how other people set themselves up for what they plan to send out.
Hope you are all doing well out there!
The Monthly Numbers
July was an interesting month. Normally I find my self talking about whether the trend line went up or down. But in the case of last month it stayed the same. And I mean it stayed pretty much exactly the same overall. More about that when we get to that trend graphic.
As for what happened within the month, while the final number was the same, it certainly looks like we got to it in a different way. It looks like July had more high number days and less of the low number days. That generally makes it feel less consistent along the way. But if you look below I had eleven days without anything which was two more of those days than June. One top of that I had eight days with at least six returns and four days of eight returns. That more of those days that I had than last month.
So more big days and more zero days got me to the same number.
I’m always going to have my junk wax spike, but it has been trending toward a bigger spike in 1993 lately. In July it took a shift back towards 1990 and appears to be landing in 1991. As always that has a lot to do with the ’90-’91 returns from my non-baseball returns. But it appears baseball joined in the fun last month a little bit more.
I’d been seeing some bigger spikes in the 1970’s in more recent months too but I think this time around that junk wax era just overpowered that in this chart.
The “City Tracker” or “Location Tracker” graph definitely is showing a little anomaly up to there. Is that Pittsburgh we see up there in the number one spot? It sure is!
It’s followed up by New York, Los Angeles/Anaheim, Oakland/ San Francisco and then we see Kansas City in the Top 5. Hooray for some small market cities making it back in to the top. Those are some cities that I don’t normally see at the top even for the ones that do normally pop up there.
There’s definitely a more gradual drop than in previous months too.
So you can see what powered Pittsburgh to the top… it was all Pirates baby! That deserves an Argh! And when I say it was powered by the Pirates, I mean there were zero Steelers and Penguins in there this month. The Royals and the Indians (I think I need to make that Guardians even though it was the Indians era right?) were behind the success of those cities at that end of the chart.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 21
- Kansas City Royals – 12
- Cleveland Indians – 11
- San Francisco Giants – 11
- Minnesota Twins – 9
- Houston Astros – 8
- Texas Rangers – 8
- Five Teams with 7 – Los Angeles Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers, Montreal Expos, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies
Getting Trendy
So here’s where we get to the trend. See how June and July decided to be “Twinsies”? Both months had 81 successful returns. Even the failures were pretty close with June having five and July having 6.
Another interesting thing that happened this month… no basketball. I’ve hit a lull in what I have to send out. I definitely don’t want to repeat as much as I have been in the past. I figured that means I’m pretty much dropping sending basketball out. There might be a few that go out here and there but I think this will be consistent in the next few months with a little hole in the basketball slot.
All that said, football and hockey both went up. I will be running out of some hockey in the very near future. I think there’s enough that I’ll probably have some in the mail going into October though unless I get a new box to open up.
While the successes remained the same, the cards back didn’t. I went down to 260 cards back. I think I’m just into the end of a planning cycle. That generally means I’m sending out to players I probably have less cards of. I’ve also been attempting some coaches and current players and I don’t send them as many cards. But I guess I haven’t gotten an overwhelming amount of those back yet. That might affect me later.
The Overall Numbers
For July I had 81 returns and 260 cards in those returns. On top of that I had six failures. While I could say that that’s virtually even with the previous month, I think its a little bit more of a down trend when you think of those numbers all together.
For the Year-Over-Year numbers, July was around 32% better than the same month last year in returns and slightly higher at 33% for the cards that came back in those returns. If you look at it from a pace perspective I am 26% better than I was at this time last year in both cards and returns. That leaves me short of last years totals by about 40%. All that sounds good.
But here’s what’s going to be hard… August was when my year started to explode last year. I don’t think there’s any way that I’ll keep up with that this year. And I shouldn’t because I’m not sending out as much. But I expect to be at a negative pace and lower numbers than the same time last year going forward.
He’s Making a List
July wasn’t a huge straggler month. There was a good amount, but I think June was a lot bigger. Going with the “Twinsies” for these two month though, both months had something in the neighborhood of a 1500 day return. For June that was a failure but for July that was an old return from Mike Leake.
The two failures in this part of the list were interesting. I think Bob Dernier is charging now. I think maybe $5 per. And unfortunately I sent to Gene Clines before he passed away and the family sent that back. RIP Mr. Clines.
Here the list of anything 200 days or more:
- Mike Leake – 1598
- Bob Dernier – 492 (Failure)
- Ed Whitson – 338
- Gene Clines – 278 (Failure)
- Manny Trillo – 207
- Randy Lerch – 204
As for my list of paid returns, this month it was only one:
- Marty Bystrom – $20 – 5 cards
I hope things are going well – many happy returns!