Fall seems to have escalated quickly…
After talking about how old I feel last month in this post it seems I am continuing that theme with a totally old man thing to talk about. But lately around here it feels as though there hasn’t been much of a fall. It seems to always feel like we go from summer straight into winter. There just seems to be less and less time with what I feel like is fall weather.
My favorite weather is a nice day in spring or fall. But the key is that its a day where you could see someone wearing a sweatshirt and jeans OR shorts and a t-shirt and you don’t look at either person like their crazy for wearing it.
Of course we do have a fall, but I need something to complain about. I don’t think the five straight days of rain helps. And of course I’m complaining about this while others just dealt with a hurricane.
Hope you are all doing well out there!
The Monthly Numbers
September 2022 was not only a down month, but was the worst month of the year so far. Based on the way the last few months have gone, I think there’s a good possibility that the trend continues. More on that later in the post.
Last month was about a consistent from a returns perspective in that both August and September had six days without returns. But as is to be expected when the numbers are down for the month overall, I got less each day across the month. I had one really good day with seven returns, then two days with six returns, one day with five and then five with four. That’s eleven days with four or more. This month it was just nine, but then a lot lower on the other days too.
I guess the positive is that I had only two failures at the very end of the month. It’s almost weird to see it out there.
The “Heat Map” is definitely something I’ve had a key interest in over the last several months. As I always point out, those first junk wax years are always going to really drive the totals in that area. That’s just where I have most of my doubles that I’m sending out. But the baseball hump or peak has been steadily heading a little bit to the right.
You can see that 1993-1995 in baseball is a super tall spot there. There was definitely a time I thought that would never happen. Last month there was also some pretty good hills down there to the right. There’s a few returns out there from current players, but also some recently retired journeymen.
The Bay Area took the top spot last month with the big driver being the A’s. This looks like a pretty even drop compared to some other months. I know last month there were some plateaus as you went down but this feels a little more even.
I mentioned the A’s above as a driver for the Bay Area, but the Braves, Orioles, and Tigers were drivers for each of their cities too. Although I guess the Orioles always are the driver for their city. In addition to those teams, the Padres and Rangers showed up well for a another month.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Atlanta Braves – 15
- Oakland Athletics – 14
- Baltimore Orioles – 11
- Detroit Tigers – 11
- Boston Red Sox – 9
- Cleveland Indians – 8
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 8
- Montreal Expos – 7
- San Diego Padres – 7
- Texas Rangers – 7
Getting Trendy
That blue line at the end keeps getting smaller and smaller. Like I said earlier in the post, I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance that it keeps heading down that way. I’m not sending back any less than I was earlier in the year, but I ‘ve lost that carryover from the prior year like I had in the first several months of the year.
Last month saw the smallest amount of monthly returns this year with 68 (lower than the 71 I had in May). I wouldn’t say that any of this is because of too bad a return rate though. I think the positive is just how small the orange line is at the end. There were only two failures for the month and they came right in the last two days of September.
Hey look! Basketball is back. I got a few basketball returns, three to be exact. I hadn’t seen a basketball success since June. Part of that is because I hadn’t really been sending much out but I refreshed my basketball stack a little bit. Unfortunately there’s a lot of guys in that stack that I have already received successful returns for, not much new.
Oh man, another line going in the wrong direction. It’s OK little orange line, maybe we can get you some help.
As is to be expected, if the returns are going down, the volume of cards in the returns is mostly likely to head down as well.
The Overall Numbers
September brought back 68 returns, with 2 failures and 211 total cards back. All down from previous months. So let’s look at what that means from a pace perspective compared to the amazing year last year.
From a Year-Over-Year perspective this was the second month in a row that was down compared to last year and it was down even more than last year. September was 26% short from a return perspective. But even though things are going down, I’m about 20% short of last years return total. Considering there’s 25% of the year left, I’m still on pace to match last year.
As for the total cards, I was 40% off last September’s card total. That’s huge! This is when my totals last year really started getting crazy. I’m about 25% off of last years total cards and 10% ahead of my pace from last year. I just don’t think the pace I am at is going to keep up though.
He’s Making a List
Just like August, September had some pretty good stragglers. It was just a few less over 200 days out, but the biggest of those numbers was in September. So the highs were higher. The highest of all of those was Ryan Raburn who I attempted when he was a member of the Nationals in 2017. Stragglers always teach you to never give up. They also provide some strangeness when you get a failure back after a year and a half like I did with Rob Ducey.
Here the list of anything 200 days or more:
- Ryan Raburn – 1846
- Rob Ducey – 549 (failure)
- Lenny Gattison – 374
- Paul Moskau – 358
- Milt May – 321
- Jimmy Garopppolo – 300
- Steve Dillard – 276
My paid return list was down a lot compared to previous month, but especially to compared to August. Here’s the full list:
- Orlando Cepeda – $20 – 2 cards
- Art Shamsky – $15 – 1 card
- Bill Lee – $5 – 2 cards
More recently I’ve been covering my failures as well. So here’s the looooong list of two:
- Rob Ducey – Charges $5 per
- Tom Lampkin – Return to Sender, but frustrating because I’ve seen others with successful returns recently. I guess I just haven’t found the right address.
I hope things are going well – many happy returns!