December wasn’t a bad month at all for returns and it closed out a great year of TTMs. It was a bit of an up-and-down month to start and then it steadied a bit by the end. I’m actually really glad that I made a goal to do these monthly reviews all year. It definitely kept me a bit more in touch with what I was doing. By the end of the year I think I was a little bit more conscious of what I was doing to meet my goals.
I was starting to up how many requests I sent out in the last couple months. I’m hoping that while that didn’t completely show up in 2019, maybe it will benefit me in 2020.
This post is going to focus on December. There will be more posts in the coming weeks to review the year in total so I don’t want to mix this up in that. I need to give December its fair share.
Let’s dig in…
The Monthly Numbers
The 9th and the 23rd were really the key days in December. Up until the 9th, I was a bit worried about how the month was going to turn out. At that point I had only had two days worth of successes. But by the time mid-month rolled around I was catching back up. Then the 23rd helped me get over-the-top of the “one a day” that I was averaging.
One of the big things is not having any failures. I know that doesn’t mean too much because really if I don’t get it back at all that is still a failure. But there still hoping right? But zero failures is definitely nice as it makes you feel a bit less like you are wasting attempts
The heat map has a new color on it folks! What’s that yellow you ask? That’s for celebrities. It was something I wanted to get into a bit more so a took a shot on someone (more about this later).
While I’m classifying as a celebrity, I think it might be more appropriately labelled as “non-sport”. That’s the way they would label it on SportsCardForm.com anyway. But the person those were from kind of crosses over a bit.
There are still a few basketball returns in there but they are hard to see. It wasn’t really as many this month and it’s not a lot of cards in each return. That makes them harder to want to send out.
Nothing will ever be as big as baseball though, even combined. And because nothing is as baseball, Topps is just always going to rule everything.
This month I did what I needed to do last month and stretch my “City” graphic this time. That’s going to let you see everything in the right detail now. Of course, I could pay attention to the bottom/right of the graphic too and cut off the teams I don’t have a return from.
Wow, again the Royals rule the month with the exact same number they put up last month… eleven! And the Mariners are in the top three again this month too. Another thing that came in right at the end of the month was a big return from a Chicago Bear that took a football team into the top five.
There were a ton of teams that had three returns, but I highlight two from Atlanta. Atlanta was represented by both the Braves and Falcons which doesn’t happen often with what I get back. It looks like three teams stayed in the top 10 that were there last month.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- Kansas City Royals – 11
- Seattle Mariners – 9
- St. Louis Cardinals – 7
- Chicago Bears – 5
- Minnesota Twins – 5
- Houston Astros – 4
- Oakland Athletics – 4
- Atlanta Braves – 3
- Atlanta Falcons – 3
- 10 others with 3
Getting Trendy
It looks like since August I was pretty consistently above 35 returns (or thereabouts). I’d like to see myself in that range for a whole year. April, May, and July were pretty disappointing in the end. I think I just have to do a bit better in managing how I choose what I am sending out to see less drops in the totals I want.
Well, the encouragement I gave to the little basketball line last month couldn’t help it this month. I think I’m just through the successes I’m going to get in basketball. I probably need to go back to my cards and see what else I can pull out of there.
Total Cards for my successes was really consistent with last month. I think I am doing a better job of mixing up requests where I have more and less cards in the last couple of months. My guess is that should make my numbers a bit more consistent.
I think I see where at least one goal will be for next year.
The Overall Numbers
I’m ending the year with 428 successes and 32 failures. That’s a great year for me but I think I can still improve upon that for next year. I broke the one-per-day mark a whole lot easier than last year. I’ll keep improving my planning and research and see where that gets me.
For total cards, I broke 1400 cards back in total. Again, I think I could continue to plan a bit better and get that number up as well. I knew an OK December would get me there and it sure did.
He’s Making a List
So back to the celebrity thing. That person was Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I was really happy with how they came out and what I used. I can’t wait to show that one off. He’ll get out of my backlog someday… I think. I’ll just say that I got creative (I guess) with some Allen & Ginter cards.
Some others I am really happy with for different reasons: John Offerdahl, Steve Farr, Brad Muster, Ron Cey, Keenan McCardell, and George Kittle.
The oldest cards I got back were sent in 2017 (Farr and Muster). There were also a couple from 2018 as well.
Happy New Year everyone! And good luck in 2020!