While December can be a time to look back at the year, I’m going to do my best to save that for my Year-in-Review post that will come at a later date. In the end it was a good month and I’d like to spend time on it.
I got to take off a little time at the end of the month and it was nice to spend a little more time on the blog. With no family coming in to visit, plus the way the holidays fell, it was nice to spend some extended time on it. Work actually slowed down a bit overall and the bosses decided to really put effort into allowing people some time off. It’s hard because no one is really taking time off when there’s nowhere to go and no one to see.
Not that I don’t spend enough time on the blog in general though. I did get ahead of some things which was nice. But I never end up putting as much into it as I ever want to. I get to be a lazy bones and just hang out a lot. It’s not like I couldn’t pull double duty and watch a game while I blog, but I don’t for some reason.
Hope you all had a good holiday season!
The Monthly Numbers
There were two days this month that were killer. The 21st and 22nd were awesome days. On each of those days I got nine envelopes back. Unfortunately on the 22nd two of those were failures, but the mailbox was packed. It’s always nice to see more TTM envelopes than Christmas cards.
But when you look at the numbers, those two days and the 14th really saved the month. It was looking bleak during parts from the month. The mail was so messed up in so many different ways. And you could tell from those good days based on the postmarks of the envelopes coming back. Somehow though the numbers got where they needed to be in the end.
There are three spikes on here and some interesting colors as well. The 1990 spike is expected based on the junk wax doubles that I send out. The 1981 and 1993 spikes are not out of nowhere, but still not expected. The 1981 spike is a lot of 1981 Fleer that was coming in. The 1993 spike is a bit more spread out between manufacturers though.
The other thing you’ll see is that there’s a different color. That yellow is labelled as “Celebrity” but I think I need to change it to “Other”. I got back Bonnie Blair and Alexa Datt this month. I’ve put a little more effort in sending out some non-sport/non-traditional sport attempts. Hopefully they will come back successfully. I’m not holding my breath for some of them though.
I think this chart is going to fall off of my monthly reports in the future. I’m so dominated by baseball that it means that Topps is always on top. I’ll try to think of a way to show it differently in the future if I can.
The big cities really brought the heat this month. It really feel like all or nothing with the top three. But in reality if you look at it compared to previous months, everything beyond the top three is a bit more where we normally see things. It’s just those top three that were a bit crazier.
As you can see from the below for each team, the Mets/Yankees, and Cubs/White Sox combos were awesome. Houston and Seattle had virtually the same totals they had last month. I think I’m happiest though with the Rockies returns as I’ve really been trying to increase what I have for certain teams.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- New York Mets – 15
- New York Yankees – 14
- Houston Astros – 12
- Seattle Mariners – 12
- Chicago Cubs – 11
- California Angels – 11
- Chicago White Sox – 10
- Texas Rangers – 10
- Colorado Rockies – 9
- San Diego Padres – 9
Getting Trendy
I got what I was looking for in another “50” month. I think that’s the sweet spot for met thinking it was a good month in the end. After the 21st and 22nd I thought it could be a big one but the numbers just came back down again at the end of the month. 55 success ties for my third highest monthly total for the year. That’s a strong close out to the year.
Check out that up-and-down look since mid-year. I’m really not changing much by way of how much I am sending out. Plus I am really consistent with when I send out. I have no idea how it ends up looking like that. But if I think about it a little more, they aren’t drastic difference. The high and low are within 10 returns of each other.
There’s that new color again. Still ruled by baseball though.
196 cards came back this month. That is the fourth highest total for me for the year. That’s a really good month in the grand scheme. And now that I think about how those two days saved the month it looks like it saved it in a lot of different ways.
The Overall Numbers
55 returns and 196 cards in those returns – awesome! I had four failures which is pretty consistent with what I’ve been seeing on a monthly basis too. That brings me to 644 returns for the year and 2227 total cards. Those numbers will look good for the year, but we’ll save that for the Year-in-Review.
On a Year-over-Year basis I had another great month over last year. I saw 41% more returns come back and 81% more cards come back. We’ve been in “gravy” territory over last year for months at this point.
He’s Making a List
So what did I like about this month? Well, first of all a trade with Tom from “The Angels, in Order” blog brought me some good stuff so check out that post if you haven’t. Other than that I got back some nice Mets cards from Jesse Orosco and Ed Lynch; and I got a few other nice cards from Will Clark, Jay Bell, and Charlie Hough.
The most extreme straggler this month was Steve DeBerg that came back at 647 days. Definitely had written off that one. The other long ones were from Lucas Sims at 390 days and Gary Allenson at 204 days.
Hope everyone has a happy new year!