I was a bit worried at the start of April because I had already put my requests on pause. I had run out of envelopes so it was a good place to stop. I placed an Amazon order shortly after and I got things rolling again, even though it was at a lesser pace than normal.
But in the end, it didn’t seem to effect my numbers all that much. I think that’s because I had planned pretty well when it came to what I was sending out. In an effort to make my goal of averaging 1.5 per day for the year, I’m trying to send out requests that have the best chance to come back. Nothing is ever a guarantee, but I’m doing my research and sticking to some old favorites and some guys that seem to be more reliable.
As I mentioned in the last couple weekly “Review / Preview” posts, I’m planning what I’ll be writing and sending next. All that while I still have some things prepared to go out. Hopefully I can limit the next potential lull and keep a steady stream going out.
How ’bout them April numbers folks!
The Monthly Numbers
You can see that what I had coming back was pretty steady in the end. There was one great day, but most days that I got things back it was two or three. There were some light days in the middle and with those four failures within those lighter areas it definitely doesn’t give you a good outlook as to what’s coming back.
I mentioned this last month too, but I think the biggest disappointment in March and April was the lack of current player returns from Spring Training. I think I just waited a bit too long and I need to catch guys on the front end of it if I do it again next year. I know it being cut short didn’t help anything anyway thought too.
The heat map for the years of cards I got back is pretty focused on the junk wax era as you can see below. That 1990-1991 spike, which gets accentuated by the football cards, is pretty fierce. I always like when 70’s years start to rival 80’s years though, like how the ’78-’79 bump is almost like the ’87-’88 bump.
Well look at that! There’s a Sports Illustrated on the list there! I hadn’t really sent to much out and I think I send a few back in December. At least one actually panned out. In general though I hadn’t had to much success so I had stopped sending. I’m sure this one success will make me send out more.
The rise of the “small markets” huh? Well, I don’t actually know what is considered small market. But I don’t think of Milwaukee, Cleveland, or Baltimore as big markets either. Definitely not like that of Los Angeles and New York where there are several teams. Milwaukee just went crazy though.
It might not be related to how many Brewers I send out but more related to how many cards former Brewers cards are willing to sign and return.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- Milwaukee Brewers – 20
- Baltimore Orioles – 13
- Cleveland Indians – 13
- St. Louis Cardinals – 10
- New York Mets – 8
- Philadelphia Eagles – 8
- Seattle Mariners – 8
- Texas Rangers – 8
- Detroit Tigers – 7
- Six teams with 6
Getting Trendy
So while April was not as good as February and March, I have to consider it a major success. I was fully expecting to be around the 30 mark and I made it to 45. And there weren’t a whole lot of failures either. They pretty consistent with previous months as well. If I can keep things I on track with sending out I should still be good for my numbers in May
You can see how football really brought it home last month. I wasn’t aware that I was even sending out that many. I’m actually surprised that I didn’t get a few basketball back in there too, but I might be misremembering when I sent some of those out.
And from a total cards perspective you can see I was at the second highest total so far this year. So a little bit lesser returns in the month didn’t necessarily equate to less cards coming back.
The Overall Numbers
45 returns bringing in 182 total cards is not too shabby. This is the second month in a row where I kind of thought I was off the pace as I was going through the month and then it turned out better than I thought. From a Year-Over-Year perspective I was 66.7% better in returns and 156% better in the cards I got back. I think that was a factor of more of a concentration on Spring Training which in general is me sending out less cards within those attempts. In the first four months of this year I am better than 50% of my total from all of last year.
He’s Making a List
This month I had a couple of great TTM guys like Chris Chambliss, Bill Wegman, Jerry Browne, Gene Garber, Frank Tanana and others come in. Those guys are all so reliable. I probably needed them to make sure that I had things coming in. I did have a few pretty long returns too. The longest of those was Jose Cruz at 670 days. But I also had some other long returns from Dave Schmidt (493 days) and Fred Marion (356 days). My highest rated autograph belonged to Lary Sorensen.
Hope everyone else had a great month too!