Saturday brought another project hit back, with Tim Wittman coming back to me after about three weeks. I had just gotten his 1992-93 NPSL gold card to go with the base set card, and I added in his 1991-92 Soccer Shots card as well.
Monday: looks like nothing coming today, just part of my order of baseball cards to mail off courtesy of a purchase from SportLots.
I likely will write something this weekend on the four-year anniversary of this blog and project as well. Hopefully I'll have a few successes to cover too...
TUESDAY EDIT: Well, I spoke too soon on the "nothing coming today" comment as one came in that didn't show up on Informed Delivery. Bobo Lucic signed all three I sent to his team in Slovenia. He also returned the $2 I sent to cover return postage.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Signs of Life
The biggest thing I hate about an empty mailbox is the uncertainty. Did the player just throw my letter away? Did I have a wrong address and the new occupants threw it away? Are they just taking a while? Did the USPS manage to destroy it? Did a sticky-fingered employee see what it was and grab it? Are they just done signing?
That's why as frustrating as the Return To Sender sticker is, at least it's certainty. So when my attempt at Dennis Mepham by mailing via his wife's office came back with the address covered and RTS stamps all over it... well, at least I know where my cards are, even if it's back in my hand unsigned.
It's been a little over a month since I started mailing again and I've sent out 22 requests. So far, I have two successes, two RTS failures, and 18 somewhere out in the ether.
Well, soon to be 17. Dale Mitchell appears to be in my inbox today; I had emailed him about sending cards up to him and about a week ago he told me they were signed and on their way back. Informed Delivery shows an envelope with Canadian postage coming in. I hope this triggers a deluge of international returns. Typically mail takes three days within the US from dropping in the outbox to delivery day. International mailing has usually been a week for me. Looks like it may be 9 or 10 days now. Seven of those remaining 17 are international ones. And this time I didn't have the right stamps for each country, so I had to put cash in for the return postage. So that inconvenience may add a little time to the response.
Last Saturday I got to go to a card show where Tatu was signing. I had gotten most of what I needed signed over time with mailing and trading and a couple of in-person outings, but it's always good to upgrade to cards signed in blue and in-person. He was awesome, commenting on the photos on the cards, reminiscing about his days with the Sidekicks. I told him about the Vegas event, and he was glad to know Doc Lawson and Godfrey Ingram showed up to it, plus a lot of guys he used to play against like Kai Haaskivi and Alan Mayer. He had been contacted but was unable to go as he was doing a lot of work to get things together for the new Mesquite MASL team that he's coaching.
It's definitely a different Tatu from the first time I met him, and I found out why. The first time I met him was when I tracked him down at the 2002 MISL ASG Skills Competition. He didn't do the postgame signing, but I was able to find him on his way out to the parking lot (I knew the building quite well: it was my high school's home hockey arena so I knew all the exits from the place). I asked him to sign a card, which he did, and then my pennant. He seemed incredibly annoyed by the second request.
It turns out there was a reason for that: I told him I had seen him at the Skills Competition but I didn't mention our paths crossing besides seeing him play. He says he couldn't play as well as he would like since he was dealing with a foot sprain. He tried to get out of participating because of it, but they pushed him into it, and admittedly, he wasn't playing his best. So I'm sure being in pain had a LOT to do with his response that day, because every time I've seen him since, he's been incredibly nice and signs a ton via mail.
I also have some more stamps coming in today-- a bunch of 5 and 10 cent fillers so I can use the rest of the 20 and 25 cent ones I have. So I'll likely crank out a few more domestic mailings if I can. I also have some baseball and hockey ones I'd like to do.
That's why as frustrating as the Return To Sender sticker is, at least it's certainty. So when my attempt at Dennis Mepham by mailing via his wife's office came back with the address covered and RTS stamps all over it... well, at least I know where my cards are, even if it's back in my hand unsigned.
It's been a little over a month since I started mailing again and I've sent out 22 requests. So far, I have two successes, two RTS failures, and 18 somewhere out in the ether.
Well, soon to be 17. Dale Mitchell appears to be in my inbox today; I had emailed him about sending cards up to him and about a week ago he told me they were signed and on their way back. Informed Delivery shows an envelope with Canadian postage coming in. I hope this triggers a deluge of international returns. Typically mail takes three days within the US from dropping in the outbox to delivery day. International mailing has usually been a week for me. Looks like it may be 9 or 10 days now. Seven of those remaining 17 are international ones. And this time I didn't have the right stamps for each country, so I had to put cash in for the return postage. So that inconvenience may add a little time to the response.
Last Saturday I got to go to a card show where Tatu was signing. I had gotten most of what I needed signed over time with mailing and trading and a couple of in-person outings, but it's always good to upgrade to cards signed in blue and in-person. He was awesome, commenting on the photos on the cards, reminiscing about his days with the Sidekicks. I told him about the Vegas event, and he was glad to know Doc Lawson and Godfrey Ingram showed up to it, plus a lot of guys he used to play against like Kai Haaskivi and Alan Mayer. He had been contacted but was unable to go as he was doing a lot of work to get things together for the new Mesquite MASL team that he's coaching.
It's definitely a different Tatu from the first time I met him, and I found out why. The first time I met him was when I tracked him down at the 2002 MISL ASG Skills Competition. He didn't do the postgame signing, but I was able to find him on his way out to the parking lot (I knew the building quite well: it was my high school's home hockey arena so I knew all the exits from the place). I asked him to sign a card, which he did, and then my pennant. He seemed incredibly annoyed by the second request.
It turns out there was a reason for that: I told him I had seen him at the Skills Competition but I didn't mention our paths crossing besides seeing him play. He says he couldn't play as well as he would like since he was dealing with a foot sprain. He tried to get out of participating because of it, but they pushed him into it, and admittedly, he wasn't playing his best. So I'm sure being in pain had a LOT to do with his response that day, because every time I've seen him since, he's been incredibly nice and signs a ton via mail.
I also have some more stamps coming in today-- a bunch of 5 and 10 cent fillers so I can use the rest of the 20 and 25 cent ones I have. So I'll likely crank out a few more domestic mailings if I can. I also have some baseball and hockey ones I'd like to do.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
All Quiet on the Grapher Front
I opened my mailbox yesterday and a tumbleweed came out of it.
Hey, this is Texas, it could happen. Though it took me close to seven years of living here to see my first one (on a random night in early December 2012 on a bus back to Wichita Falls from Amarillo).
Okay, it's not too bad: I did get David Hoggan back on August 1, and he signed all five cards I sent. Nice score, and major thanks are due to Dave MacKenzie for helping me find him. And I just mailed out Tim Wittman and Kia today.
As of right now, I have eleven cards sent out that have at least one signature from another player already on them (nine of those are part of this project, while two are just extras I had and wanted to complete). This is where I try not to get concerned, but it still slips in. It's only been 27 days since my first mailings post-MISL40, and my average on this project so far is 45 days. So I'm probably jumping the gun massively.
My fingers remain crossed. There's nothing worse in this hobby than losing a multi-signed card, but when you have no other option to get it signed sometimes you just have to take that chance. I do have something coming in the mail today that doesn't have a photo on Informed Delivery. I'm hoping maybe someone decided to put in something extra and sent it in a large envelope. I just don't want a postal body bag with some destroyed cards (which has happened only once this whole time, thankfully). More than likely though, it's a catalog or magazine that's unrelated to this project.
Hey, this is Texas, it could happen. Though it took me close to seven years of living here to see my first one (on a random night in early December 2012 on a bus back to Wichita Falls from Amarillo).
Okay, it's not too bad: I did get David Hoggan back on August 1, and he signed all five cards I sent. Nice score, and major thanks are due to Dave MacKenzie for helping me find him. And I just mailed out Tim Wittman and Kia today.
As of right now, I have eleven cards sent out that have at least one signature from another player already on them (nine of those are part of this project, while two are just extras I had and wanted to complete). This is where I try not to get concerned, but it still slips in. It's only been 27 days since my first mailings post-MISL40, and my average on this project so far is 45 days. So I'm probably jumping the gun massively.
My fingers remain crossed. There's nothing worse in this hobby than losing a multi-signed card, but when you have no other option to get it signed sometimes you just have to take that chance. I do have something coming in the mail today that doesn't have a photo on Informed Delivery. I'm hoping maybe someone decided to put in something extra and sent it in a large envelope. I just don't want a postal body bag with some destroyed cards (which has happened only once this whole time, thankfully). More than likely though, it's a catalog or magazine that's unrelated to this project.
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