February might be when Spring Training starts, and I can’t ignore that because at least two-plus weeks of the month should be considered. But it’s March when the Spring Training successes will really come in. I think you’ll find that come out in the data for the month. I had more successes than previous months, but less cards. That’s just a function of what I send out during Spring Training.
Unfortunately I didn’t control myself as much I wanted to this year. I told myself I wasn’t going to send out as much. And when I did send something out I didn’t want to take as many chances. Well, best laid plans I guess because that totally didn’t happen. There was definitely a lot of hemming and hawing on Twitter and Instagram about that. Some are avoiding Spring Training because the juice might not be worth the squeeze. I definitely felt that this year. I guess I’ll have to see how I feel next year and maybe I can remember this post.
The Monthly Numbers
This month definitely had a good spread of success. There were a few spikes, but I didn’t feel the lulls as much as I did in February. Surprisingly I only received one Spring Training failuresthis year. Last year I got a couple that I didn’t understand, but this year just the one. I think I thought someone was a different person.
I did get more failures than previous months. And on top of that, more of the failures were straight up returns instead of Return to Sender or something like that. The downside to that is that they use up my return envelope and I can reuse it.
43 success helps me keep up a good pace and builds some extras for a slow month or two in the future. I’m pretty solidly in the “TTM+ a day” for an average at this point.
I’m predicting a lull in April. I just feel like I might not have been sending to the most reliable signers in the last few weeks. I think I’m going to be feeling that coming up. I need to get back on track with a list to keep up with and pay attention to who I am planning for.
Lots of baseball this month. Again, another impact of Spring Training TTMs. And as you can see with the numbers skewed for more recent years, I’m sending to current players who have recent cards. I did get some good coaching returns too and most of those were solidly in the mid-80’s and early 90’s period. I think I need to get back to making those numbers grow on the older side of that chart.
Topps is obviously killing it. That’s a function of more recent returns. And who rules the recent cards for MLB? Topps, of course.
Wow! The Bay Area really represented a lot of returns this month. The Los Angeles/Anaheim cards were really not Dodgers…, it was everything else. I started combining certain cities/states a bit more this time too.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- San Francisco Giants – 9
- Cleveland Indians – 7
- Milwaukee Brewers – 7
- New York Yankees – 7
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 7
- Chicago Cubs – 6
- Philadelphia Phillies – 6
- San Diego Padres – 5
- Five others tied with 4
Getting Trendy
Everything is up this month compared to both months this year. Some of that is because more things went out in February and March. But another reason is that January attempts have come back at a really high rate.
Even though I didn’t really get a lot of Spring Training success (at least not compared to what I sent out), you can still see the impact of a whole lot more baseball going out.
I didn’t send less football than previous months. But, for some reason I didn’t get them back at the same rate. Maybe I just hit a patch of guys that take longer to return them.
Here’s where you can see a little bit of the Spring Training impact with regard to what goes out. The successes went up, but the cards total diminished. That’s because I send less out to current players.
I find that current players, if they sign, won’t sign more than two and sometimes one. The exception to that rule is good ol’ Pat Neshek who will sign whatever you give him that isn’t a dupe in my experience.
Still not sure where the last report is going. Interesting to see the Average time go down. Another impact of Spring Training returns maybe?
The Overall Numbers
I’m up to 111 returns in a 90 days through the first three months of the year. I don’t know why but when I think of that rate each month it sounds great, but when I look at it with the bigger numbers I think it doesn’t sounds as impressive to me. Still, I think I should strive for 1.5 returns a day on average. Your goal should be lofty but attainable right?
Something I wanted to do this year is get into more of other sports. Those will probably be hockey and basketball. The problem is I just haven’t had time to go through my dupes (what little I have) for those sports. Maybe April will be the month I get to do it.
He’s Making a List
My failures for the month were Jaime Garcia, Sal Bando, Bobby Brown, Jay Buhner, Marty Bystrom and Ron Jaworski. Jamie Garcia, a coach with the Tigers, is not who I thought he was (oops!). Bando and Brown I just probably need to do some better research on. Buhner was a return from the Mariners that took forever and Jaworski looks like he asks for donations. Marty Bystrom was odd because I saw others having success, but my cards came back unsigned in my SASE. Maybe I should send less? I hate when that happens because I can’t reuse that small envelope like when I get an RTS return.
My favorites for March were: Jose Berrios, Cecil Cooper, Joe Musgrove, Mike Cameron, Ross Stripling, Blake Snell, Jed Lowrie, Tom Rathman, Aaron Nola, David Robertson, and Hensley Meulens. You’ve seen a few of those as I decided to post my Spring Training successes as I got them. I posted two per day when I started getting those in.
I am still backlogged and might have to doing more than one a day so I am not posting April successes in September. Right now I’m running a 28-day backlog. So you’ll see some of those names soon.
Hope you guys had a great month too! Keep at it and be patient!