Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Mail Call: A series of quick successes, and a return to the failbox

In my last post I mentioned that I had mailed out a few, had more to come, and then tacked on even more on top of that.  Since restarting this month, my mailouts have gone to...

MARCH 7: Paul Wright, Preki, Tatu, Kai Haaskivi (written in Finnish), Jim Gorsek, Bruce Savage

MARCH 10: Don Popovic, Doug McLagan, Batata, Jim Gabarra, Paul Dougherty, Greg Ion, Eddie Radwanski, Mark Simanton, Kevin Hundelt, Charley Greene, Chico Moreira

MARCH 14: Alan Mayer, Stan Cummins, David Boncek, Kelly Mock, Brian Hall, Gino D'Ippolito, Esse Baharmast, Marty Templin (with Herb Silva), Ricky Davis, Ted Eck, Tony Glavin, Freddie Thompson, Jean Willrich, Gerry Gray

The results have begun trickling in this past week, with a deluge of four yesterday.

March 18, Don Popovic came rolling in, as he signed three cards and even wrote a short note on my envelope, saying the league needs more fans like me. Awesome! Popovic gives a small, vertical sig on the cards but it looks pretty cool.

The next day I got Charley Greene, as he signed three cards and wrote a short note back as well. Always glad to see the former Cleveland Crunch guys returning. I actually met Greene at the 2002 All-Star Game in Cleveland where he played in the Alumni Game.

Yesterday came Bruce Savage on five cards, Ricky Davis on two cards plus a note back, Ted Eck on three cards, and Gerry Gray on two cards plus a note back.

I'm planning on buying international stamps in April. I have a few hockey mailings to go to Canada and Slovakia, and I might see if I can send off a few soccer ones to Canada as well-- Carl Valentine, Drew Ferguson, Pasquale Deluca, Frank Klopas, Tasso Koutsoukos, Dale Mitchell, and Mark Karpun are all up there. No Slovakian players that I've found just yet.

I also need to look into getting postage for returns from the UK (£2.25, it appears? Looks like I have ten to mail out, so at least it's a nice round number), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Argentina, Croatia, Slovenia, and South Africa too. If anyone knows the prices or where I can buy stamps for the return envelope, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I also got RTS'ed by Chico Moreira. That's my third attempt and third failure on him so I may be done trying him unless someone else reports a success somewhere.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Mailing out!

Bought a roll of stamps, and it's time to get back to mailing.

Most of my requests will be soccer-related ones with a few baseball and hockey ones that will go on my main autograph blog.  A quick rundown, here's what I've sent so far and what's coming next...

MAILED MARCH 7
Paul Wright, Preki, Tatu, Chico Moreira, Kai Haaskivi, Jim Gorsek, Bruce Savage

UPCOMING
Don Popovic, Doug McLagan, Alan Mayer, Batata, Jim Gabarra, Paul Dougherty, Greg Ion, Eddie Radwanski, Mark Simanton, Stan Cummins, Kevin Hundelt, and David Boncek

I also have others who will be going out soon too, including most of the referees in the 1990-91 set. Brian is hooking me up with an extra card on each, so those will get written and sent as soon as they arrive.

I wrote Kai Haaskivi's letter in Finnish, so I'm hoping that might help things. I'm half Finnish myself and with a little (lot) of help from Google Translate, I got a letter cranked out. Here's to hoping it works, as I haven't seen many successes from him.