Today is the last day of my spring training vacation.  I had planned on going to the Astros workout, but unfortunately it was supposed to rain all day, so I ended up taking the day off to recuperate.

I've been in a pretty poor mood all day, as I hate wasting a day.  Luckily, I got a nice return in the mail to lift my spirits.

Billy Pierce - 2/2

Added another baseball to my growing "South Side Hitmen" collection.  Today's mail brought an Eric Soderholm baseball, complete with inscription and jersey number.

I received a very nice baseball from Ralph Garr yesterday.  I sent baseballs to Ralph, Alan Bannister, and Eric Soderholm, asking for the same inscription.  For Mr. Garr, I included a $10 fee.  The baseball looks amazing:

I received a couple of successes this week:

Mark Dalesandro - 2/2
Cory Snyder - 2/2

The Dalesandro isn't a Sox card, but as his only Sox cards are in minor league team sets that I don't have, it will have to do!

I was perusing my Mailbag database, and I noticed that I have had a pretty good success rate over the past year.  I decided to share my success rate for 2009.  Hopefully this will continue to improve as the successes keep piling up!

Mailings - I sent 255 requests in 2009, and thus far have received 190 successful returns.  That gives me a success rate of 75%.  Not bad!

Total items - I sent 546 items in 2009, and as of today 427 of them have been returned to me signed.  That comes out to a 78% success rate.

My quickest returns were from Chris Knapp and Roberto Hernandez.  In both cases I had the signed cards in my hands 3 days after mailing!

The slowest return so far was from Orlando Cabrera, which took 224 days.  I expect this to change though, as there are always a few returns that show up long after you've given up on them.

I'll be doing my (belated) first mailings of 2010 in the next couple of weeks.

I received a couple of nice returns from Texas today:

Doug Drabek - 2/2
Scott Ruffcorn - 2/3

I haven't received much mail recently.  Only one return this week, but it was a pretty nice one!

Gus Zernial - 1/1 (1950 Bowman rookie card)

Today the mailman was kind enough to bring me:

John Snyder - 2/2

Hello again!  I'm sorry about the lengthy delay since the last post, but I've been on Holiday!  We (the wife and I) spent some time in Las Vegas and Southern California.  I got a few nice returns during my sabbatical, of both the eBay and TTM variety.  Lets start with the eBay purchases:

Albert Belle 1998 Bowman's Best Autographs
Bill Goodman 3x5 (one step closer to completing the 59 team!)
Smead Jolley 3x5
Duane Josephson 3x5 (only need a few more all-stars!)
Willie Kamm 3x5
Cecil Upshaw 3x5

I forgot to mention something in my last post.  In addition to all of the card successes I posted, I also received a couple of 8x10s:

Dustin Hermanson - 2/2 8x10s