April report, and ... a thinning of the herd?

Obviously, I have no IP reports to talk about. But I hit the mailing hard at the end of the month and plan to do so in early May as well.

APRIL 3
Orland Kurtenbach, c/o Canucks Alumni, 3/2, 4 months, wrote a short note back

APRIL 7
Luis Melendez, c/o home, 3/3, 5 months

APRIL 14
Gene Alley, c/o home, 3/4, 5 months, returned one unsigned

APRIL 16
Tom Tupa, c/o home, 4/4, 4 years

APRIL 27
Keith Millard, c/o home, 4/4, 1 week
Charles Nagy, c/o home, 5/5, 1 week
Reggie Cleveland, c/o home, 1/1, 1 week, paid $2 signing fee
Will Wilson, c/o home, 5/5, 1 week, personalized all

APRIL 30
Chris Perez, c/o home, 4/4, 1 week
Bobby Witt Jr., c/o home, 2/2, 1 week
Goose Gossage, c/o home, 1/1, 1 week

MAY 1
Charlie Hall, c/o home, 3/3, 1 week
Carl Hairston, c/o home, 3/3, 2 weeks

From April 20-27, I've sent off 45 requests. I have enough stamps to send 55 more domestically, plus 20 outgoing stamps for international requests. One is going to Japan. I also have about $100 in cash to get some players who charge.

And that leads me to something I'm thinking about. I might decrease my number of sets I'm working on.

I don't plan to give up on the indoor soccer or hockey sets. I'm super close to being done on all of those. Football, Nascar, I could go either way on those.

But the baseball sets are pure hell. The 1972 Topps set has 787 cards and when you include all the multi-player cards, it'll take 863 sigs to complete (this includes a random cardless player/coach/owner/broadcaster/organist on the team card, and an umpire on each checklist). I have 383 at last count. I'll never complete it-- I mean Mays, Aaron, and Mike Marshall, all want well over $200 per sig, plus Clemente, Don Wilson, Jim McGlothin, Danny Frisella, Danny Thompson, Bob Moose, and Thurman Munson all died before 1980. And I plan to hit the 2021 Heritage sets super hard too-- by which I mean the regular, high numbers, AND minor league sets.

I also have been working on the 2003-2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites sets. 442 cards in them. I have 183 signed including several now deceased. But again: Mays, Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, and several others who charge way more than I can afford, plus several deceased that I never got. I'll never finish it either.

And I've been doing the 1982-1991 Diamond Kings because clearly I am a masochist; not even going to get into those.

Maybe it's time to scale back and drop the ATFF and DK sets. There's a LOT of trade bait in there-- Ernie Banks, Nolan Ryan, Yogi Berra, Jim Bunning, Don Sutton, Alan Trammell, Sparky Anderson, Ernie Harwell, Fergie Jenkins, Whitey Herzog, Goose Gossage, Harold Baines, Wade Boggs, Brooks Robinson, Duke Snider, Andre Dawson, Ralph Kiner, Ryne Sandberg, Monte Irvin, Tony LaRussa... and that doesn't include the non-HOFers like Joe Carter, Dale Murphy, Jim Kaat, Johnny Pesky, Don Zimmer, Jose Canseco... I think you get my point. And I didn't even touch on the DKs (Canseco, Gossage, Tony Gwynn, Tim Raines, Ivan Calderon...).

I hate giving up on a project that I've sunk so much time, effort, and money into, especially when the 1972 is a comparatively recent thing for me (I started the ATFF sets in 2007, the 1972 Topps set in 2014, and the DKs around maybe 2016). But sometimes you just have to know when to turn your attention to something a bit more viable. At the very least, maybe someone will be willing to trade my ATFF Fergie Jenkins for their 1972s, my ATFF Brooksies for their 72s, something like that. I don't know. It's not official yet, but I'm giving it some major consideration.

Meanwhile, expect to see a lot more of me (screenname of *censored*) at SportsCardForum. I've become a made man... err, I mean a moderator there. I have a training period to go through first, but I'm on my way moving up the ladder there. With that, I'm going to be adding a few moderators to the Facebook groups in which I'm an admin (Baseball TTM Autographs; Ballpark Graphers; Baseball Autograph Traders) this weekend.