I think I pretty much called my shot on this one. Compared to previous months. April was a bit of a disappointment. That’s not to say it was horrible. If I look at it compared to some months last year it was great. I felt like I had some momentum going though and although I might have seen this coming, I still don’t like it.
When I try to dissect why it might not have been good, I think I might see why. I didn’t send out less or anything like that. I think it has to do with the way I plan what I send out. I usually get inspired to send things out so I plan for different themes that I try to get out. For instance, I might have piles of:
- Cards for players where the oldest cards are pre-1980
- Cards for players who I have already but these are new cards
- Cards for players I haven’t sent before
I think you get the idea. Each of those piles has the ones I really want to try at the top and probably guys I have more cards of at the top as well. I think in March and April I might have been writing to guys at the bottom of those lists. Maybe they were long shots or maybe they were guys that take longer – either way I think that added up last month.
The Monthly Numbers
As you can see, I had a few good days. But the good days weren’t as good as previous months. You can also see a couple big gaps in the beginning of the month and the the end of the middle (ish) of the month. Even though you see a lot of individual cards coming in toward the end of the month it was really feeling like I was getting nothing. So far that’s continued into May as well.
Only one failure is nice. That turned out to be something old that just never got followed through on before the end of last season and finally came back. It was coming back from Roger McDowell who was the pitching coach in Baltimore last year. I guess he didn’t take his mail with him when he left.
So I was just under my goal of a TTM a day. Luckily I’ve built up a little bit to try to keep the pace for the year, but I really am hoping to get closer to 1.5 a day by the end of the year.
Again, lots of baseball. I’m running about 2-3 tries at football per week compared to maybe double that for baseball. One of my goals was to get into other sports. I just need some time to go through cards for that because I just had a lot on my plate for getting baseball and football out the door. Maybe I need to take some PTO at work just to get into some more TTMs.
Upper Deck made a bit of a push this time. I had come into some ’93 Upper Deck and ’94 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice not that long ago so I found a bunch I could send out in those boxes. I think that’s showing up now.
This has actually been one of my favorite things to follow in the data. I’ll send out just about anything and I rarely focus on a team. Maybe the Mets because they’re my team, but in the end that’s mostly just prioritizing getting any Mets on my lists out the door first. LA/Anaheim had a lot and I think that was due to some old Raiders and Rams sneaking in. But I do love when the smaller markets sneak to the top – like Cleveland.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- Seattle Mariners – 7
- Texas Rangers – 7
- Los Angeles Dodgers – 5
- California Angels – 4
- Cleveland Indians – 4
- Denver Broncos – 4
- Detroit Lions – 4
- Chicago White Sox – 3
- Cleveland Browns – 3
Getting Trendy
It’s starting to look like a camel in the data… lots of humps. Hopefully that means a big hump in May.
I was still getting back some Spring Training successes throughout the month which I really enjoyed. I stopped posting those the day I got them like I was during Spring Training through. It was actually a pretty good split between players and coaches too.
I think this is another place where you can see the returns for guys that are towards the bottom of my lists. A lot of times that’s because I don’t have a bunch of their cards. If the return isn’t as great I am less likely to prioritize them. Now add that to sending less cards for Spring Training and still seeing some of those returns and I think that adds to the less cards per success.
The Overall Numbers
Through the first four months of the year I am at 138 total successes with 14 failures. So far that has brought home 415 cards too which I think is a pretty good return rate from a volume perspective.
I’m doing a few things to up my game over the next couple weeks. I’m planning a little less into the future so that I can flex who I am writing to a bit easier. I hope that allows me to send out things I think will return more faster and hopefully more cards in each of those returns.
He’s Making a List
As I said earlier, my only failure this month was Roger McDowell and that was a left over from the end of last year. My favorite successes for April were: Ozzie Newsome, Bobby Valentine, Bill Lee, Frank Tanana, Brad Arnsberg and Dennis Smith . I’ve caught up to April posts so you’ve seen some of those already. I definitely have brought down the backlog with some of these lulls..
Hope you guys had a great month too! Keep at it and be patient!