Where does the time go?
Later this year I’ll be into my fourth year of doing this blog. I’m not sure I can believe I’ve made it this far, but especially making it that far at the pace I’m at now. I started doing a daily post in about 2018 or so and I’ve only missed a couple days within that time (sometimes even I get sick enough not to blog). Plus I have days where I post twice.
I’m hoping to do a few new things with the blog this year. But there’s another way to look at where my time goes. Unfortunately right now that’s sometimes into other things. I get these grand designs of updating this monthly report and then things like real life become a time suck. I mean who needs work right?
I’ll just keep telling myself I’ll get to it and then keep on keeping on the best I can. I hope you all are doing the same.
Happy TTMing y’all!
The Monthly Numbers
Another month with two pretty awesome days. The 4th brought in nine returns and the 25th brought in another eight (one of those a failure). But beyone that there’s a lot of consecutive days with getting something in my mailbox. There were 13 days where I had three or more envelopes and then 23 days where I at least got something.
I kind of had a feeling with the way I ended December that I was going to potentially have a touch January. I had that spell where I was out of stamps for a week or so and that meant I had to catch up with getting things out. I think I got a little extra out than what I would normally do and now I must be reaping the benefits.
Another thing that’s continuing from the end of last year is that I have some extra colors. Basketball made a little bit of a comeback and I have another sport that I got. That was Annika Sorenstam on an Allen & Ginter card. I’m just about to start getting out hockey like I planned to do so we might just have to go an add another color to the list if that works out.
Unfortunately you can still see the junk wax era prominently. That’s not terrible, but usually it balances out a little more with other years. This time the older years are a little lesser and I got some more recent spikes on the chart.
As promised I’m done with the brand chart. It was so overwhelmingly Topps that it wasn’t worth seeing anymore.
I predicted this a week or two ago in a Review/Preview post but the Rangers and the Dallas/Texas grouping really brought it this month. I think that happened more in the beginning of the month and then that Oakland/San Francisco group sort of snuck up on me. That’s sort of another thing that carried over from last year is the “big city” aspect of this chart being strong.
So I told you the Rangers were strong!
New York teams didn’t even appear on the list and they killed it last month. The only teams that made repeat appearances from the month before were the Rangers, White Sox and Angels. What’s funny about that too is that they kind of reversed their order. The Rangers were closer to the bottom of the Top 10 last month. Seems to be a bit of a log jam with the last spots at 8.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Texas Rangers – 22
- Milwaukee Brewers – 16
- Chicago White Sox – 14
- Philadelphia Phillies – 14
- San Francisco Giants – 14
- Cleveland Indians – 13
- Boston Red Sox – 9
- Four tied with 8
Getting Trendy
Last month closed out 2020 well and I was looking to hit that 5-0 type of number. But O-M-G! This month I hit the 7-0 mark! I got all the way up to 73! I was almost close to getting as much returns as the previous two Januarys combined! I apologize for all of the exclamation points in this paragraph… I’m excited.
Either I don’t have the data collected or I just can’t find it going past 2019 (I think I started these posts in 2019) but if I go back that far, this was my best month ever. 73 returns is eleven more than my best month last year and I only broke 60 twice last year. And there’s only one little failure down there.
Continuing something else from the end of last year again, four colors! Baseball is a juggernaut though.
As you might expect by getting 73 returns back, the number of cards I got back was better than ever too. I had 263 cards come back in those returns. That ended up being 51 cards more than I had in my best month last year.
The Overall Numbers
73 returns and 263 cards I think has me on a pace to have almost 12% of last years numbers already. Definitely a great pace to be on, but it’s just one month so I shouldn’t get too excited. Looking at it Year-over-Year, both of those numbers were 62% better than January last year.
Even though all of this adds up to a great month, I had tempered my goals in the beginning of the year a little bit. That’s because I have a feeling of what is coming in the Spring and how busy I’ll be.
He’s Making a List
A did have a good amount of stragglers and some of them were intense. Here’s who made the list of the top stragglers:
- David Treadwell – 1041
- David Treadwell – 589
- Joey Wendle – 487
- Gene Nelson – 369
- Billy Spiers – 362
- Mitch Garver – 343
- Mark Prior – 324
- Jim Wohlford – 309
Those are all over 300 for last month. The David Treadwells were two different returns that came back at the same time. I probably just figured the first was gone… and the second. Some of the others appear to be Spring Training returns from last year.
Some of my favorites for the month were: Mark Prior, Ruben Amaro Jr. (my kids love The Goldbergs), Kevin McReynolds, Annika Sorenstam, Wes Chamberlain, and David Fulcher. All for different reasons and not all because I like their signature.
I hope you all had as good a January for TTMs as I did!