I recently saw someone that I hadn’t seen in a really long time. I realize that I’m writing that I could probably say that for a lot of people, but anyway… it still applies. We got into this pretty long conversation about a lot of different things. It’s funny how conversations can go so many different places in a span of minutes as two people’s brains starting thinking of related topics (or sometimes not so related).
One of the interesting things we were talking about was going back to work. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to be remote. What I was telling her was that I’ll probably stay remote as will all the people who work for me. We’ll probably only go in for a few team meetings from time to time.
But I was also mentioning how the company I work for is trying to think of how we will do things in the future. We have this system now where you can reserve a desk for the day. There going to a scenario where more people will have to do that and there will be less dedicated space. Some people are OK with it and some aren’t.
But we started thinking about how do you decide who that happens to and how do you keep a culture with new hires when they might meet people less. She works for the local college and actually teaches a class to kids as they go into the workforce and runs an intern program. So it was really interesting to her.
It made it even crazier that we hadn’t seen or talked to each other in a while and we had so much interesting to tell it other.
Hope you’ve been having some good conversations lately and been getting to see people!
The Monthly Numbers
I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong, but with the returns numbers I have been getting the last few months, I feel like that’s what’s happening. Checking out my numbers, issues with the mail and all that, it makes me feel a bit paranoid about the hobby from time to time. I know there’s nothing to it but it doesn’t stop me from thinking that way.
Returns were as steady with the last few months numbers in the mid-50’s. That’s good in general but not after the first three months I had this year. I just have this feeling like something is going to explode in a good way at some point.
Like last month, I had one day really carry everything else. June 24th was the monster day this time and there were only two other days that I had more than three returns. There’s some consistency to the return numbers, but not necessarily to start the month. One we got about a third of the way through you can see it.
Normally what you would see with the spike below is something around ’89-91ish. That’s there as you can see and as I’ve been showing you, it’s hockey that’s really helped that out because that’s where my concentration of hockey is. But this month there’s a second spike.
And oh what a spike it is! Look at 1993 people. That’s a dagger! There are a couple places where I think this comes from. First, after picking up some yard sale cards where there were a bunch from that year helped. Second, I’ve been trying to collect more expansion team cards and the Rockies and Marlins came to be in that year.
I’m not sure how much any one pays attention to this other than me, but I love watching the swings of what cities and teams are represented coming back to me. This month it was the Bay Area, Minnesota, Detroit, and St. Louis that were really coming in more than anything else. They were all a little more even than some of the things I’ve seen in the last few months where one town just kills it.
While Oakland and San Francisco I combine, Minnesota, St. Louis and Detroit don’t have helpers. I can tell you too, that is all baseball. There’s not much else I have going out right now and there’s only a few stragglers out there from other sports.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Minnesota Twins – 17
- St. Louis Cardinals – 15
- Detroit Tigers – 15
- Philadelphia Phillies – 13
- San Francisco Giants – 11
- New York Yankees – 9
- Milwaukee Brewers – 8
- Chicago Cubs – 8
- Seattle Mariners – 8
- Cincinnati Reds – 8
Getting Trendy
So while my successes stay pretty steady with 57 for the month, my failures went up. I think normally the failures sort of stay at the same rate as the successes. But in general they are a bit unpredictable This month they jumped to seven. As for the reasons, it was a couple bad addresses, but it also some of me not paying attention.
As I mentioned earlier, I pretty much have all baseball going out. At this point any other sport is most likely a straggler. Maybe not hockey as much. I’m just not spreading my attempts like I was among sports like I was earlier in the year. Maybe that has something to do with my successes dropping, but I wouldn’t think it’s significant enough numbers-wise. I do need to start diversifying again though.
I made a mistake on this chart below. The number of successes for this month I entered in was 27 but it should be 57 (matching April). I just didn’t feel like correcting it all. Yeah, I know, lazy bones!
The Overall Numbers
Well, I said May was the worst month so far this year. So far that is true because June did technically go up. Not significantly but I’ll take it. The number of cards I got back went up pretty well though.
As for my Year-Over-Year numbers, I’m 31% better in returns so far and 28% better in card totals. That’s mostly due to the first three months of the year because other than that I’ve been a bit stagnant compared to last year. I was actually down compared to June last year when my total was in the 60’s for returns, but it was almost the same about of cards that came back, just two short.
He’s Making a List
There were definitely a few good stragglers but one really took the cake. But here are some really good names in those stragglers.
Here the list:
- Doug Fister – 1054
- John Jaso – 552
- Larry Walker – 550
- Brandon Webb – 456
- Bill Parsons – 280
There were some really pretty signatures in what I got back this month too. The best I think are (in no particular order): Bill Parsons, John Stuper, Doug Fister, Steve Nicosia, Larry Walker, Kelly Miller, Stan Papi, and Scott Leius.
I hope you had a good hobby month too!