Spoiler Alert… February was a great month!
This month I almost got to a “2 per day” pace. With a little bit better ending I could have pulled it off. It felt a little bit all-or-nothing at times. That’s because I had some big days and then was felt like some empty stretches.
It was an awesome time to have a good month because the month started out crazy at work and it was almost as if I didn’t feel like I had time for what I normally do. But I made it through that push and then it ended kind of quietly in the non-TTM part of my life. The TTMs definitely helped me get away from things in the beginning and gave me more to do at the end.
Let’s get this party started…
The Monthly Numbers
I always find it a bit funny to think about how the month felt to me, and then I see the graph. To me it felt very all or nothing. I’ve gone through some long periods of getting something every day. But that was one or two. This was four one day, nothing the next two, four another day, nothing the next one, then four the next two days consecutively. It gave it a kind of herky-jerky feel.
I was hoping to catch up a bit in February and I did. What I was thinking though was that it would be some Spring Training returns to help me out. Unfortunately the only Spring Training returns I’ve received back are failures. At least three of my failures were from Royals and Rangers. There’s something going on there that I can really pinpoint. The other was just a bad address.
The heat map has a lot more little spikes in the 2000’s. I think when I planned my last round to get writing (which I am still working my way through) I hit some newer guys. While I’ve been happy to skew older in the last few months, it’s also been nice to sort of spread out the collection a bit more through the years. I tend to have a late 90’s and early 00’s blank spot. So this month filled that in a little bit.
There’s that teeny tiny basketball point at the top of the main 1990 spike. It was the only non-baseball or non-football return of the whole month. I’m still not sure when I’m going to break into some hockey. I have the cards set aside though.
I always tell myself I should just take Topps off the list. But I feel like I’m missing something without it. I think this is the first appearance of Triple Play on any of my lists though.
New York was mostly Mets this month as I seem to have found a bunch of my Metsies to get out. But look at how that Baltimore line snuck in there. Fourteen Orioles cards came in this month and they are the only team that carries that city on this chart. They are competing with a lot when it comes to LA and Anaheim. But you can see that this month it was mostly big cities up there a the top.
Here are the Top 10 by team for the month:
- Baltimore Orioles – 14
- Texas Rangers – 12
- Minnesota Twins – 11
- New York Mets – 11
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 10
- Kansas City Royals – 8
- California Angels – 7
- New York Yankees – 7
- Seattle Mariners – 6
- 6 Cities with 5
Getting Trendy
I decided not to leave last years graphs up. I think you can get the idea that February was pretty damn good from the below though. Putting up a 50+ was definitely not something I thought was going to happen this month. Maybe March, but definitely not February.
Total cards was really crazy too. It was over 172 cards plus an 8 X 10 that was a surprise.
The Overall Numbers
53 successes that brought in 172 cards is crazy. It gives me 98 for the year and 334 cards in the first two months. I’m almost at a quarter of last years total. If you look at it from a year-over-year (y/y) perspective I was 77% better than I was last year in returns. February was actually one of the lower totals I put up last year.
I was also 75% better in the cards I got back too. Of course some of that has to do with the fact that I almost doubled the returns I had last year in February. This year I have 100+ more cards than I had last year in the first two months.
He’s Making a List
My favorites from this month include Matt Olson, Rich Harden, Pokey Reese, John Matlack, and Willie McGinest. And given there were a bunch of Mets those are always right up there for me. Considering what the weather is at this time of year I didn’t have two many get damaged with rain or anything like that. And we didn’t have any significant snow in my area (yet) so that was good.
There were a couple notable stragglers as Sal Butera too 433 days, Ken Williams took 563 days and Lee Tunnell took 932 days. Those were some that I really didn’t think I would get back at all.
Hope everyone else had a great month too!