Everyone has their ups and downs. The worst part about the ups is knowing that they can’t keep going up. There has to be a down coming. But the best part about he downs, is that you know there’s going to be an up. That is, at least, if you are a somewhat optimistic person.
So after two down months, or maybe months that I wasn’t really where I wanted to be, June really paid off. It was one hell of an up month as you’ll see below.
I really got some great returns back for the 70’s era cards I’ve been sending out. It was a month dominated by baseball, as most of my months are. It was also a month dominated by one great streak of receiving TTMs back for several days in a row. It might have been one of my best streaks ever.
The Monthly Numbers
May really started to bleed into June and I was getting nervous about having a third month in a row that was not where I wanted to be. I made the comment on Twitter that I was thinking about receiving a TTM as a win and not receiving one as a loss. So my “Last 10” win streak wasn’t that great. from there I went on one hell of a run.
Starting on June 7th I got at least one TTM back for 17 days in a row. That’s not counting Sundays because you can’t get mail on a Sunday. For some reason my spreadsheet didn’t take out Sundays in the chart above even though I took them. out. But you can see that I had a crazy streak from 6/7 through 6/26. And it wasn’t always just one. There were a couple days of four per day and three days of three per day.
Again, baseball dominates the returns as I stated earlier. I’ve definitely been sending out less football (maybe two per week), but I have been keeping it pretty consistent in getting them out. Usually one of those is a guy I’ve gotten a return from and the other is a guy I’ve never sent to before.
I’ll have more about this later, but it’s about time to set myself up an updated list of letters to right. I plan to try to start shaking things up a little bit.
I think Fleer jumped up a bit more and I’m sure a few 1990 and 1991 football cards helped that. Usually Pacific is one of the brands for football that I have higher because I have a ton from the 1991 set, but this month it looks like Pro Set might have eclipsed it.
It was #HoustonStrong this month I guess. I got a few Oilers returns back but even more Astros returns. The New York returns were really dominated by a few big Mets returns. I’ve now combined Green Bay and Milwaukee. I don’t know if that’s acceptable to fans of teams in those cities, but it kind of seemed to make sense for me. The other teams that really jumped up were the Cardinals and Blue Jays.
As for who went down, Chicago was definitely a downer. I only got one Cub card and one White Sox card.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- Houston Astros – 11
- New York Mets – 11
- St. Louis Cardinals – 10
- Toronto Blue Jays – 10
- Houston Oilers – 8
- Minnesota Twins – 8
- Cincinnati Reds – 6
- Cleveland Indians – 6
- Miami Dolphins -6
- Three other teams with 6
I really don’t plan any of this when I send them out. That’s probably why I love looking at it and it seems so interesting to me. I mean there really is no way to plan it because I can’t control what I get back.
Getting Trendy
Remember I mentioned those ups and downs? Looks like we are three all half way through the year.
It felt like a great month and then when I looked at the data I realized how great of a month March was. I guess if I didn’t have a slow a start it really could have been better. And not too many failures to speak of.
You can see from this one how much the football returns were lacking. It wasn’t the worst month for football, but definitely not the best like in the beginning of the year.
What a crap ton of cards I got too! The was the biggest month yet by a good amount. It comes in ahead of my tremendous January and might be one of my best months ever for total cards received back. And it wasn’t even the most successes I got back. March still holds that one.
The Overall Numbers
I up to 203 total successes and 22 failures for the year. I wanted to try to get to a 1.5 returns per day ratio and We’re now one month away from halfway through the year and I’ve gotten back 164 successful returns and 19 failures. That makes my ratio 1.12 for the year. Better than one per day which is good, but not where I want to be. I need to keep the pedal to the medal.
My worry is by trying some new sports I might take some risks or use some resources on some not as guaranteed returns. I’ll have to make sure I keep things balanced.
I’ve already checked out my hockey and basketball doubles which I have significantly less of. I think I’ll have to make sure I manage them well. It definitely could impact my total number of cards I get back because those requests will just be one or two cards at a time for the most part.
To balance it out I’ll probably be closely evaluating and monitoring what I send for baseball. I’ll balance it against what I see people getting back for new attempts along with some guys that I’ll be sending to again to get more of their cards signed.
He’s Making a List
My favorites list this month includes Adam LaRoche, Jim “Crash” Jensen, and Larry Christenson for some of my highest rated returns. But then I got some good Mets returns with John Stearns, Terry Leach and Doug Sisk highlighting that area. You haven’t seen all those yet as I am still working on that backlog.
As for returns I got back Tyson Ross from the Tigers who like Jordan Zimmermann in the previous month was looking for a donation. The same goes for my attempt with Ron Gardenhire. So it looks like the Tigers definitely use the opportunity to support charities. That’s great but I usually don’t feel the urge to resend those. I also got back Tim Krumrie who I’ve received a return from before so he must have moved.
Hope you guys had a great month too! Keep at it and be patient!