Signs, signs, everywhere the signs…
I feel like the last few weeks there have been a lot of signs that things are kind of returning to normal. At least in my world anyway.
I’m writing this on the morning that I took my second vaccine dose. So now I just need to let that brew inside me a bit. As for the rest of my family we are 5/8 done. The only challenge right now is that my younger teenager isn’t eligible to get the vaccine. But things are turning around for that too because it sounds like they are going to give the OK on that soon.
The other sign happened last weekend during the neighborhood yard sale. Sure there was one last year, but this one was different. I met a new card collecting friend in the neighborhood and it felt good to talk to people. It’s probably the closest thing I’ll get to a card show for a bit as I don’t think I’m ready to go that far just yet.
There’s just things out there that are making me feel better about things. Of course the Spring and being done with cold weather helps things too.
Hope you are doing well.
The Monthly Numbers
April was a good month in general, but it was the worst month of the year so far. But it’s all relative. 57 returns would have been the fourth best month overall last year. But this year, it could potentially be towards the bottom of the monthly totals for 2021. While I would love to say I hope it’s not, I shouldn’t say that. I actually hope it is and things just get better and better from here.
The daily numbers don’t look all that different than normal. I didn’t have the highs of the last few months, but four days of five returns is pretty good. The problem is there are a few more holes where I didn’t get things certain days. The mail just didn’t cooperate too well for April. It definitely felt like some of the USPS issues from the end of last year cropped up again.
Unfortunately those seem to be continuing into May.
Junk Wax of course is huge and we continue to see all the colors on the chart in the ’90-’91 range. But baseball rules as always no matter what those colors come up as.
There are some good sized lumps on the right side of the chart. I think those are going to grow a bit, but there will probably be a little bit of a delay. I got some new cards that are a lot newer than I normally send out, but I have to get them out to get them back.
Last month Milwaukee just killed every place else. This month things were a little bit closer. But the big cities definitely rose to the top with Los Angeles, New York and Dallas were the top three. Toronto showed up in fourth. That’s pretty much a hockey thing that helped them to that which is good to see.
Last month the Brewers were more than double the second place team. This month the teams were may more equal. So nothing crazy like last month in the data this time.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Los Angeles Dodgers – 14
- Toronto Blue Jays – 13
- Texas Rangers – 11
- New York Mets – 10
- San Diego Padres – 9
- Seattle Mariners – 9
- Houston Astros – 8
- Three tied at 7
Getting Trendy
So that somewhat consistent (consistently high!) numbers faded a little bit. You can see the 57 returns and four failures were just not keeping up with the rest of the year. Hopefully we’ll keep everything above that line from here on out.
Not as many pretty colors as there were in previous months. I actually didn’t realize that the other sports were so much closer to the low side than they had been in previous month. A lot of times I have a feeling about how things are going and then I get to doing the numbers and they don’t come out how I think. I think previous months can tend to make me think things are going differently.
When the returns go low, you can expect the card totals to go lower too. I’m getting some returns out that have less cards in them, but I think this is mostly due to less returns coming back.
The Overall Numbers
April had 57 returns with 204 cards in them. That’s 20 less returns than the previous month and more than 70 cards less too. That’s a pretty significant dip. It’s still 25% more returns than April last year and 12% more cards for the same time month.
I broke 1,000 cards for the year and I’m just about to break 300 returns for the year. Things are going in the right direction but I just had a little dip. Hopefully it is a dip and things go back up.
He’s Making a List
The stragglers were really down this month. There was only one that was over 200 days and normally I’m using 200 as my low point to look at . Here the list, but going a little it lower this month:
- Andy Benes – 669
- Jack Del Rio – 166
- Tom Rathman – 166
The failures were mostly some bad addresses. A couple of those were guys that I was taking a chance on anyway. But I did try Doug DeCinces and got it back and I would have thought that would have gone through as I’ve gotten returns from him before. Might just have to try that one again.
As for my favorites: Storm Davis, Howard Johnson, Rollie Fingers, John Olerud, Doug Christie, David Segui, and Ryan Spilborghs. Those are some fancy ones for the most part, but there were a lot of good looking autographs coming in this month.
I hope you had a great month too!