My international postage finally came... sort of.
Unfortunately the place I bought my stamps through didn't tell me that they ran out of several of the stamps I needed. They didn't charge me for them, but it would have been nice to know and I would have bought some different ones. So, my mailings to Italy (Roberto Baggio), Croatia (Damir Haramina), Slovenia (Bobo Lucic), and South Africa (David Byrne) won't be happening just yet.
But now, a little info on how to do this most effectively.
With soccer being the most international of all the sports played in the US, collecting soccer autographs may involve a lot of mailing around the world. While it's true that all of the Big Four have had international players as well (MLB has plenty from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia; the NFL once in a while has a few European and Central Americans, usually kickers; the NBA had over 100 foreign-born players on active rosters at the start of the 2014-15 season; and the NHL is nearly one-third European), none of those sports are played anywhere near as much as soccer worldwide.
With my MISL project, a significant portion of the players in the sets were foreign-born (just looking at a random roster to give you an idea, the 1990-91 Cleveland Crunch had 24 players; 13 of them were born outside the USA and eight had citizenship only in a European country-- two had dual citizenship and three were Canada-only). Many gained citizenship and stayed in the United States after their playing careers, but a handful did return home.
The toughest part of mailing out autograph requests internationally is getting the proper return postage. American stamps won't typically do you any good in getting it back. I've had success with them before, but I wouldn't recommend it. And International Reply Coupons are expensive and hard to come by.
Once you have an address, you then know where to send, and postage to get your letter over to the player is the easy part-- right now it's $1.15 to mail a standard one ounce letter internationally (one ounce is approximately a SASE, a letter, and up to about 8 cards, so you should be good to go on most players). The USPS sells International Forever stamps that cover the cost even with future rate increases. Unfortunately my local PO doesn't always have them. On the positive side, standard first-class stamps are 47 cents, and a two-ounce stamp is 68 cents. What happens when you put those together? Bam, $1.15. So that's what I did. Unfortunately the only two-ouncers they had in stock were wedding themed. Great...
Knowing the price of a return stamp can be tricky as it varies from country to country. Not only because of differences in monetary exchange rates, but also due to different prices post-exchange. Just because it costs $1.15 to mail a letter internationally here in the US doesn't mean it'll cost €1.05 to mail from anywhere in Europe, or £0.95 from the UK, ¥118.94 from Japan, or 10.17kr from Sweden.
Most countries' postal websites could tell you this info. But unless you're semi-fluent in a few languages, you may be sunk as translations are not always available, and even Google Translate isn't always the best.
Fortunately, there is a site that lists mailing rates from every country-- their domestic rates AND their international rates AND an approximate cost conversion. So you can find out that it costs 60 Lek to mail from Albania, and that a US dollar is approximately 104 Lek: so it's about 60 cents. Meanwhile, it's 50 Argentinian pesos to mail from Argentina to the US-- nearly $4!
For the MISL sets, that means I'm mailing to...
UK - £1.05
Croatia - 13 Kuna
Serbia - 70 Dinar
Netherlands - €1.25
Argentina - 50 pesos
South Africa - 6.60 Rand
Slovenia - €1.26
Bosnia-Herzegovina - 2.15 BAM
Canada - C$1.25
Denmark - 30 Krone
So once you have it all set as to what cost you need to cover, the next step obviously is buying stamps. K4HB recommends a guy named Bill Plum, who can be contacted via an email address listed on their site. I didn't notice that until just now. Herrick Stamp Company is who I used. You may have to pay a bit of a premium, but once you realize that you are not getting charged much for shipping, not having to deal with multiple exchange rates, not having to buy a ton of extra stamps that you don't need, not having navigate a bunch of websites in multiple languages, and not having to wait different amounts of time for them all to get to you, it's not that bad to pay a little more. My only wish is that I had been told they were out of a few I needed. I would have gladly bought some different ones. I may give Mr. Plum a try next time.
So from there, just put your American postage on the outgoing envelope, the appropriate foreign postage on the return envelope, and then just treat it like any other TTM request. Make sure to put USA at the bottom of your address on your return envelope.
If you don't want to bother with international stamps, you can always toss in a couple dollars to cover postage. It's worked for me before (some have even sent back my cash), but I prefer making it as easy on the other person as possible. I once heard of a baseball player writing an angry note back to someone for enclosing cash instead of stamps on a ball, basically saying he doesn't have time to go stand in line at the post office and that he was never signing again; and so far he hasn't. So, I don't want to be That Guy.
We'll see how this goes. I had success with my Netherlands and Canada requests (except one), all of which had postage rather than cash, and I've had decent success with hockey requests across borders, so I have high hopes for these as well.
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Mail Call: October 5-11
Still no foreign stamps yet. This is killing me.
On the positive side, I have gotten back 6 more in the last week or so.
OCTOBER 5
Nebo Bandovic, c/o work, 1/1, 1 week
Bandovic only had one card in the Pacific sets, but he signed it pretty quickly for me.
OCTOBER 7
Mike Fox, c/o home, 5/4, 3 weeks
Fox wrote a short note back saying it had been a while since he had been asked for an autograph. He signed the four I had (I picked one up in a trade earlier).
Terry Nicholl, c/o home, 3/3, 2 weeks
The importance of double-checking! The original address I had for Nicholl was through a high school he was coaching. Key word: was. He's no longer there so I had to dig a bit to find a different address but fortunately I found it. He signed two on the back and one on the front.
John O'Hara, c/o home, 2/1, 1 week
O'Hara was RTS'ed to me from a Minnesota address recently. Fortunately some digging netted me his current location-- just outside Cincinnati, OH. He also wrote a short note back.
OCTOBER 11
Tim Schulz, c/o work, 3/2, 2 weeks
Great response from Schulz, who even took the time to write a full letter back to me telling me about what he's up to in coaching and development in Colorado.
Paul Krumpe, c/o work, 2/2, 2 weeks
Got both versions of his 1987-88 cards signed. Krumpe currently is a college coach in California.
Here's to hoping I have some stamps today. And if not, at least a mailbox full of successes. I currently have 10 mailed in September that are still out. Fortunately 24 have come back successfully (with three that were RTSed before being successful). Total on the year so far, I'm 53/79, and 116/172 all-time.
On the positive side, I have gotten back 6 more in the last week or so.
OCTOBER 5
Nebo Bandovic, c/o work, 1/1, 1 week
Bandovic only had one card in the Pacific sets, but he signed it pretty quickly for me.
OCTOBER 7
Mike Fox, c/o home, 5/4, 3 weeks
Fox wrote a short note back saying it had been a while since he had been asked for an autograph. He signed the four I had (I picked one up in a trade earlier).
Terry Nicholl, c/o home, 3/3, 2 weeks
The importance of double-checking! The original address I had for Nicholl was through a high school he was coaching. Key word: was. He's no longer there so I had to dig a bit to find a different address but fortunately I found it. He signed two on the back and one on the front.
John O'Hara, c/o home, 2/1, 1 week
O'Hara was RTS'ed to me from a Minnesota address recently. Fortunately some digging netted me his current location-- just outside Cincinnati, OH. He also wrote a short note back.
OCTOBER 11
Tim Schulz, c/o work, 3/2, 2 weeks
Great response from Schulz, who even took the time to write a full letter back to me telling me about what he's up to in coaching and development in Colorado.
Paul Krumpe, c/o work, 2/2, 2 weeks
Got both versions of his 1987-88 cards signed. Krumpe currently is a college coach in California.
Here's to hoping I have some stamps today. And if not, at least a mailbox full of successes. I currently have 10 mailed in September that are still out. Fortunately 24 have come back successfully (with three that were RTSed before being successful). Total on the year so far, I'm 53/79, and 116/172 all-time.
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Mail Call: October 1-3
I got a RTS from John O'Hara, but found a new address to mail out to, so we'll hope for the best from there. I'm also just waiting on my foreign postage to get here and then I'll have a decent overseas batch to mail out (14 MISL, one outdoor, and two hockey).
In the meantime, I got a few more back.
OCTOBER 1
Tom Kain, c/o work, 3/3, 1 month. Kain works with Nike, pretty high up in the company. He signed all three cards I had of him. I was pretty happy to see this one come back, as if memory serves me correctly a previous attempt to him on SCN went unreturned.
Branko Segota, c/o home, 5/5, 2 weeks. This is the second time I got Segota and it finishes off all the cards I need him on (and then some). He typically signs in pen, just as a heads up.
Duncan MacEwan, c/o home, 2/1, 1 week. Second time is the charm! He signed the David Doyle card that features his photo in blue pen, and also signed my letter.
OCTOBER 3
Theo Kulsdom, c/o home, 4/3, 2 weeks from the Netherlands. I had mentioned before how Kulsdom got returned to me with a note from the current occupant of his former address saying he was no longer there, but to try finding him on Facebook. So I did and he said to send them on over. He signed them and wrote a short note as well.
John Bain and Jeff Cacciatore, each c/o work, each 2/1, each 1 week. A pair of former St. Louis teammates signed their 1987-88 cards and wrote a short note back.
So, as I said I'm just waiting on my foreign postage to arrive. As soon as it does, here's who will be getting requests...
Craig Allen, UK
Dominic Feltham, UK
Paul Peschisolido, UK
Steve Pittman, UK
Terry Rowe, UK
Gary Stanley, UK
Mike Dowler, UK
Godfrey Ingram, UK
Ron Fearon, UK
David Byrne, South Africa
Dalibor Cvitanovic, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Damir Haramina, Croatia
Nenad Markicevic, Serbia
Bobo Lucic, Slovenia
I'm also sending to Roberto Baggio in the world of outdoor soccer (to Italy), as well as hockey players Pavel Vorobiev (to the UK) and Borje Salming (to Sweden).
Speaking of Salming in a roundabout way, I got my FA Sápmi jersey in the mail the other day as well. For those who don't know, FA Sápmi is a CONIFA team composed of Sámi players from the areas of Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. I believe I'm part Sámi as my family originally came from this area. I still have relatives in Tervola, Kemi, Rovaniemi, Kemijärvi, and Sodankylä in Finland, as well as Karasjok, Norway. I haven't been able to prove it 100% yet, as documentation of this is hard to come by; but I have been told that it is accepted that anyone north of a line from Oulu to Pudasjärvi has a lot of Sámi ancestry. Other past ancestors of mine came through Jukkasjarvi, Sweden as well. So I wanted to get something to represent that part of my background and after talking to the team's president, I was able to buy a jersey. It even has #21, which I typically have worn for floorball (along with #52 and #11). Salming is part Sámi, and it was via reading about him that I became more interested in finding out more about my background in that area. In fact, if the research on geni.com is all correct, he and I are 11th cousins once removed through his dad's side of his family, who I believe are 100% Sámi.
I plan to write a foreign request tutorial very soon as well.
In the meantime, I got a few more back.
OCTOBER 1
Tom Kain, c/o work, 3/3, 1 month. Kain works with Nike, pretty high up in the company. He signed all three cards I had of him. I was pretty happy to see this one come back, as if memory serves me correctly a previous attempt to him on SCN went unreturned.
Branko Segota, c/o home, 5/5, 2 weeks. This is the second time I got Segota and it finishes off all the cards I need him on (and then some). He typically signs in pen, just as a heads up.
Duncan MacEwan, c/o home, 2/1, 1 week. Second time is the charm! He signed the David Doyle card that features his photo in blue pen, and also signed my letter.
OCTOBER 3
Theo Kulsdom, c/o home, 4/3, 2 weeks from the Netherlands. I had mentioned before how Kulsdom got returned to me with a note from the current occupant of his former address saying he was no longer there, but to try finding him on Facebook. So I did and he said to send them on over. He signed them and wrote a short note as well.
John Bain and Jeff Cacciatore, each c/o work, each 2/1, each 1 week. A pair of former St. Louis teammates signed their 1987-88 cards and wrote a short note back.
So, as I said I'm just waiting on my foreign postage to arrive. As soon as it does, here's who will be getting requests...
Craig Allen, UK
Dominic Feltham, UK
Paul Peschisolido, UK
Steve Pittman, UK
Terry Rowe, UK
Gary Stanley, UK
Mike Dowler, UK
Godfrey Ingram, UK
Ron Fearon, UK
David Byrne, South Africa
Dalibor Cvitanovic, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Damir Haramina, Croatia
Nenad Markicevic, Serbia
Bobo Lucic, Slovenia
I'm also sending to Roberto Baggio in the world of outdoor soccer (to Italy), as well as hockey players Pavel Vorobiev (to the UK) and Borje Salming (to Sweden).
Speaking of Salming in a roundabout way, I got my FA Sápmi jersey in the mail the other day as well. For those who don't know, FA Sápmi is a CONIFA team composed of Sámi players from the areas of Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. I believe I'm part Sámi as my family originally came from this area. I still have relatives in Tervola, Kemi, Rovaniemi, Kemijärvi, and Sodankylä in Finland, as well as Karasjok, Norway. I haven't been able to prove it 100% yet, as documentation of this is hard to come by; but I have been told that it is accepted that anyone north of a line from Oulu to Pudasjärvi has a lot of Sámi ancestry. Other past ancestors of mine came through Jukkasjarvi, Sweden as well. So I wanted to get something to represent that part of my background and after talking to the team's president, I was able to buy a jersey. It even has #21, which I typically have worn for floorball (along with #52 and #11). Salming is part Sámi, and it was via reading about him that I became more interested in finding out more about my background in that area. In fact, if the research on geni.com is all correct, he and I are 11th cousins once removed through his dad's side of his family, who I believe are 100% Sámi.
I plan to write a foreign request tutorial very soon as well.
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