Every year has a little carry over from the year before in the TTM game.
Of course there’s always the stragglers that carry over. Sometimes even skipping a year (or two, or three…) before they carry over. But I’m thinking about how much you put out at the end of one year and how that carries over to the next.
In 2021 I was putting out a lot at the end of the year and that meant for a lot of carry over last year. So much so that it was the best monthly total I ever had with 123 returns and 407 cards. That’s going to be hard to beat ever. But in 2022 I had started to slow down a bit more and I continued that trend starting this year as well.
But that carry over effect is real and it seems like it came to light this year too. As you’ll see below, I had another strong start to the year.
Hope you are all doing well out there!
The Monthly Numbers
As you can see from the chart below, I had three really big days in January that helped the monthly total out a lot. Two of those days, January 3rdand January 17th, are go along with the carry over theme. That’s because those were the days after three day weekends. They have a tendency to be hire as the mail piles up over a couple days in a row without mail.
But the rest of the month was pretty consistent too. I’m really hesitant to right this because the jinx is real. But if you really look at the data, aside from Sundays and Holidays, I’ve received at least one piece of mail since January 9th. The last regular mail day without mail coming in, and the only of those days in January was January 7th. Now that makes for a good month.
The “Heat Map” has a huge ticket up for 1992. The big number with that is that baseball cards from 1992 put up a 45. Holy crap! I don’t usually keep track of the individual numbers on this report like that, but that’s the biggest number that I remember seeing on here.
I also see some better spread compared to December. And there are some newer cards that came back in here too because I had some current players come back, I think some from last Spring Training.
Well apparently Chicago took a little bit of a break in December and came back really well in January. They got up there to number two. Los Angeles/Anaheim takes the top spot. Surprisingly though they don’t really do that all that often. There’s a little more of an gradual trend down from last month too. In December Baltimore just put a hurtin’ on everywhere else. There some good numbers from some smaller markets like Pittsburgh.
You can see it was the Pirates that really carried Pittsburgh in the city/location rankings as they took the top spot. The Orioles still made the Top 5 after a big month in December too. I think the interesting thing I see is that the Top 10 is that the spread in December was from 35 to 8. This time the race was much tighter as the top spot had 21 and the bottom 15.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 21
- Oakland Athletics – 17
- Philadelphia Phillies – 17
- Baltimore Orioles – 16
- Chicago Cubs – 16
- Houston Astros – 16
- Los Angeles Dodgers – 16
- Atlanta Braves – 15
- Seattle Mariners – 15
- Texas Rangers – 1
Getting Trendy
At the beginning of every year I get to this point in this post and think, “oh crap, I said last year that I should include the end of the previous year for a few months.” Well, needless to say based on the below that it happened again. You can’t really have a trend if you can’t see the pieces that make up the trend.
What I can tell you is that it’s going up every month since last September. If things hold to the usual form though, February or March might be a little bit down.
This chart doesn’t look that dissimilar to the numbers from December. Basketball and hockey are a bit lower but essentially it’s the same. And yes, there is a hockey bar there. It’s just that it was only one return with one card.
Again, you will either have to take my word for it, or find my December 2022 TTM Report post to see, but I’ll give you the deets. The number this month is a lot higher for the cards that came back. Like almost 50 higher. There was a very slight dip in that area for December so January was a bit of a comeback in the number of cards.
The Overall Numbers
In January 2023 I had 91 successful returns and six failures. There were 345 that came back in the successful returns. All a great start to the year. I’m thinking probably the high point of the year a lot like last year. That’s my prediction for 2023.
From a Year-Over-Year perspective everything was down. But what do you expect when I was going to be comparing it to my best return month ever. I was down 26% in returns (I had 123 last January) and I was down 15% in cards (I got back 407 last January). All that said, nothing is dampening my view that a good thing is continuing, maybe even getting better through the end of last year.
He’s Making a List
January felt a little bit like the month of the straggler. And really the long straggler at that. There was a little bit of discussion on Twitter about that topic. December was a bigger month for returns. But in reality there were only two more stragglers than last month. There were some longer ones in January, but more total that were over 500 days than in December.
Here the list of anything 200 days or more:
- Rick Dempsey – 1318
- Quinton McCracken – 918
- Mike Kingery – 799
- Jharel Cotton – 603
- Michael Cuddyer – 517
- Shawn Springs – 464
- Dan Pasqua – 462
- Ledell Eackles – 386
- Derrick Mayes – 366
- Dusty Baker – 357
- Shawn Boskie – 343
- Phil Garner – 337
- Tommy La Stella – 289
- Greg Kragen – 254
- Trever Miller – 248
- Mike Dunne – 245
- Keith Van Horn – 244
- David Treadwell – 233
- Mike Ramsey – 201
As for paid returns, I did get some back in January. Unlike December when I had none:
- Jim Palmer – 4 cards – $40
- Tim McCarver – 2 cards – $20
I’ll finish up with a list of the six failures I had for the month. Not too bad on that front:
- Henry Cotto – Charges $5 per card
- Jim Pankovits – RTS and I resent to a different address
- Derrell Thomas – A straight return, maybe doesn’t sign or charges but no note about it
- Doug Sisk – Goes through PastPros now
- Ray Donaldson – Looks like he charges, included a card but I didn’t look at the website
- Clarence Kay – RTS with no new address
I hope things are going well – many happy returns!