While you are going to see a bit of an up-and-down few months, September 2019 wasn’t all that much of a down. Sure it wasn’t the same month I had in August, but it also wasn’t the down I saw in some other month. The first half of the month was pretty consistent, then it slowed a bit from mid-month on, and a super great last day of the month really brought it home.
And while the successes are nice, there were no actual failures that came in this month. I feel like I should predict there will be a few in October though. I seem to be taking a few more chances at what could be bad addresses and that might rear it’s ugly head now that we are in a new month.
Some other things you might notice as we get into the numbers… things skewed a bit older and I got a new sport in the list.
The Monthly Numbers
I love my family. Again, I had some time where I was out of town and they were looking out for me. They usually right the days on my envelopes. Although these days I’ve been using informed delivery. That let’s me match most things to the day it came in.
My daughter was great though. I guess she discussed it a bit with my wife as the week I was out went on. She mentioned at least once, “why isn’t Dad getting any cards?” Then when I got that load in the last day she was like, “so that’s where they all are!”
That last day of the month might have been my best all year. Usually four is a big day, maybe three.
There’s a few more little bumps in the more recent years on the heat map this month. Some of those were from a surprising return from Jason Varitek that I have yet to post. Others were some recently ones that I sent out at the end of the year to Pat Neshek and Hunter Strickland.
What you’ll also see on there is a little gray triangle for basketball. It wasn’t for a card though. I got back a Sports Illustrated that I had sent out a while ago. It had to be a while ago because I don’t think I’d even sent out one since last year. Hopefully you’ll be seeing more gray on here because I’ve been working on getting a few basketball cards out.
Maybe I need to take Topps off the list. I’ll have a Topps graphic and an everything else graphic, you know, just so the other brands feel like they can compete. Upper Deck taking the second spot doesn’t surprise me. Score was big for me last month and I think I just happened to gravitate toward more Upper Deck at some point.
New York hasn’t really been at the top for a while. But a few each from former Mets, Yankees, and Jets brings them up to the top. And this month Oakland/San Francisco pops up as number two. That’s mostly because of former San Francisco Giants cards as it made up 75% of that number. I don’t think they’ve been that high since I started looking at this.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- San Francisco Giants – 10
- St. Louis Cardinals – 10
- Boston Red Sox – 9
- Chicago Cubs – 8
- Los Angeles Dodgers – 7
- Milwaukee Brewers – 6
- New York Mets – 6
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 6
- Toronto Blue Jays – 6
- Two teams with 5
Getting Trendy
You can see an up-and-down, but I feel like the line for the last four months is a little bit more even than the five months before that. The highs of January and March really contrasted those of April and May. I know July is a lower point, but I think he other three months help balance it out.
I had a goal of averaging 1.5 cards returned per day for the year. That would mean that I need to have more months like March and August (really more like in the 45 range though). But looking at how many months are over 30 makes me feel good that I’ll be over 1.0.
No failures this month is great, but damn it looks weird. I’ve taken some images of graphs I messed up in previous months so it almost looks like a mistake to me.
Look at that cute little gray box down there in September. Awww!
It was an odd feeling month. I wasn’t really tracking the stack of cards I had received back for the month until right at the end. And look at that! That’s a ton of successes for the month right there. Top 3 or 4 for the year!
The Overall Numbers
309 successes and 29 failures for the year, not too shabby with three months to go. But even better… I’m over 1,000 total cards back! Woo Hoo! I’d love to say I’ll be at 1,500 for the year by the end of the year, but I think based on what I’ll have to go out, I’ll get more like 1,400… maybe. That’s probably with a couple of good months. But I would have to have my three best months ever to get to 1,500.
He’s Making a List
Some of my favorites were Rich Gedman and Jason Varitek – funny… two Red Sox catchers who I didn’t think I would get something back from. But I’d also put Rick Honeycutt, Jim Leyritz, Dave Righetti, Shabazz Napier (that old SI I was referring to), Milt Thompson, Tim Teufel and Don Kessinger. A lot of those were just because of how the signature came out and not necessarily who they are.
Hope you guys had a great month too! Keep at it and be patient!