Five years ago today, the first two successes of this project came to my inbox, officially kicking off the project. I had always figured I'd just see how far I could get in it all. With several foreign players returning to their home countries, several more deceased, and countless others who may just not want to be bothered, I figured that completing this would be a hell of a trick. Furthermore, while indoor soccer has some devoted fans, the number of signed copies of these cards (or even unsigned copies) can't possibly rival many baseball, football, basketball, and hockey card sets, limiting trading opportunities. I thought maybe I'd get to 75% completion across the entire thing, ever.
Five years in, I'm past that 75% mark. Granted, I hit that three years in, but still, that's more than I figured I'd get to. I'm closing in on 85% completion, and that's even after adding in the 1992-93 NPSL set on a whim because I was able to get most of it for a reasonable price. I'm over that 85% mark on just the MISL sets.
I've reached out to several via Facebook with varying degrees of success. Shane Schwab and Mark Kerlin came back successfully. Tony Csiszar and Damir Haramina did not. My attempt to mail to David Byrne was RTSed thanks to South Africa postal restrictions during COVID-19; I'll try again once they're back to semi-normal operations. People who never responded include Carl Valentine, Erik Rasmussen, Russ Prince, Paul Peschisolido, Dennis Mepham, Doug Kriska, Waad Hirmez, Bobby Joe Esposito, and Brian Enge.
For the most part, it's starting to dry up. There are several that I've tried without success, some of those multiple times. Check out the breakdown year by year:
2015: 88 mailed, 62 successes
2016: 98 mailed, 68 successes
2017: 59 mailed, 40 successes
2018: 6 mailed, 5 successes
2019: 28 mailed, 11 successes
2020: 5 mailed, 2 successes
There's not a whole lot more I can do without some help via trades, 50/50s, or some in-person luck. A lot of it is that these multi-player cards are absolute killers (I know I can get some of them; I'm just afraid of getting one signed by all but one, mailing it to the last guy... and never seeing it again). I'm hoping that this Indoor Soccer Alumni group that's on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere might be able to help me out.
I do at least have two nice updates from my last post: as stated above I got my Shane Schwab card back signed. I also had a big flash from the past end up in my mailbox as my mailing out to George Fernandez over a year ago came back to me on August 18, with him signing the last four cards I needed from him. So I went and updated my want list from the last time I posted it.
Overall, I can't say I'm in the home stretch on this, but I'm certainly starting to slow down. Maybe one final Hail Mary push soon. Ray in Baltimore sent me a big list of contact info on some guys, along with some of the unsigned cards I needed. I need to get in gear and try some emailing, I think. I have a new batch of stamps coming this week, so no time like the present to see what I can find.
I'd like to get to 90% overall in the next year. I'm only six away from having the 1987-88 set kicked; let's see if I can finish that one off too.
