Sometimes life is a game of streaks. Sometimes the TTM game is a game of streaks. I’ll get more into the general streaky-ness of last month when I look at the monthly numbers, but I had two interesting streaks this month… name streaks.
In two instances this month I had streaks of receiving three returns in a row of guys with the same first name. I know, I know, 1… NERD! And 2… DOUBLE NERD! But what are the odds of that? I send out plenty of cards and there are plenty of names within those returns.
But I just find it odd that Mark Ryal, Mark Huisman and Mark Eichhorn all return something back to be at about the same time. And I find it even more odd that Dave Johnson, Dave Tobik and Dave Goltz do the same thing (all on the same day even). Sure, it’s just coincidence, you can tell yourself that.
Hope all is well in your world!
The Monthly Numbers
I always find it a little funny how one part of a month, depending on how it’s placed, can really change you feeling on the month as a whole. Of course I’m choosing to look at it by month and I could use a different measure, but it’s what I’ve been doing.
The beginning of this month started off like gangbusters and I was on a great pace. November 13th might be might best day of the year or at least tied with it I think. But what totally changed the feel of the month was probably about 11/21.
I didn’t know it at the time but Thanksgiving week was a complete dud. At least for me and what I’ve been sending out now, four returns in a week is considered a dud. Being it was the end of the month it pretty much changed the feeling of what should be considered a good month. If it was at the beginning I’d probably feel differently about it.
There was barely anything except baseball that came back this month. What I find funny though is that my graph appears to be giving me the finger. I’m not sure if its 1990 looking at me a saying, “Sorry dude, junk wax rules your hobby.” Or maybe it’s just a general sentiment towards me. Hopefully the heat map is the only one that feels that way about me.
I think if I was sending out more football and basketball, or at least getting more of it back this would look pretty different. I did send a chunk of them out more recently and I’ve planned to get them back in the rotation a bit more. That should mean the brands spread out a bit. I think I’m also sending out some newer and more divers baseball from the late 90’s and early 00’s that hopefully will come back and change things.
Houston really brought it home this month. That was mostly thanks to the good month of Astros that I got with a few Oilers thrown in for good measure. Chicago fell pretty hard this month after ruling the roost last month. Pittsburgh had another strong showing this month too after a good month last month.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Seattle Mariners – 13
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 12
- Texas Rangers – 12
- Detroit Tigers – 11
- Houston Astros – 11
- Montreal Expos – 11
- Baltimore Orioles – 10
- Boston Red Sox – 10
- Cleveland Indians – 9
- Four tied with 7
Getting Trendy
So I came back down to earth in a way with 51 successes and four failures this month. The failure number is amazingly consistent still. Maybe that’s because I’m being consistent with what is going out.
I’m hoping that I can have another “50” month at least for December to close out the year pretty strong. It seems wrong to look at it as this month is the tied for the third worst in total successes for the year. Even though I pointed out how the last week made me feel, it didn’t feel like it wasn’t successful.
It’s amazing how up and down the chart is. I really don’t change much about what I am sending from month to month except for the Spring Training time of the year.
So as you can see below, this was my most baseball heavy month for the year. Maybe that has something to do with how the total ended up. It’s probably just a coincidence though.
181 total cards for the month is actually pretty good in the grand scheme. A lot of months this year ended up right around that total. I’ve had three months of 182 this year and now this one of 181. It’s funny how numbers go sometimes.
The Overall Numbers
The total numbers all together are 51 successes, 181 cards, and 4 failures. I’m still on a pretty good pace this year. I’ve now surpassed 2,000 cards back for the year in almost 600 successes (589 so far). With another nice month I could get to 2,200 on the total cards and maybe 640 for the total returns.
The Year-over-Year numbers have looked great all year and that didn’t change too much. I was 45% better for returns and 70% more for cards over November 2019. For the year I am 37% better overall for returns and 44% better for total cards. That’s an awesome year to this point and hopefully my last month is just gravy.
He’s Making a List
Some of my favorites for this month were: Dick Green, Ken Schrom, Doug Jones, Zane Smith, Jim Palmer, Gaylord Perry, and Juan Gonzalez. I think the best one though was Steve Pearce. He put a little WS MVP inscription on there that made it even better.
There weren’t as many extreme stragglers like I’d see recently, but there were a few. For instance, Case Candaele (812) and Dave Meads (648) were out there for a while. Other than that it was Toby Harrah (162), Steve Pearce (140), Brian Holman (134), and Mark Huisman (110) who were up over 100 days out.
Wishing you more happy returns for the rest of the year!