SportLots, sets, and sorry music

So I made my first venture into the world of SportLots yesterday. I have been close to completing a number of early ‘80’s Topps sets, and with the SportLots purchase and 1 or 2 eBay winnings, I finished the 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985 Topps sets, along with the 1982 and 1984 Topps Traded sets.  My Topps complete set run now goes from 1984-1999. I am just 113 1980 Topps cards, 126 1981 Topps Traded cards, and 1 1983 Topps Traded card away from having an ‘80’s and ‘90’s run of Topps sets. I could probably finish the ‘80 and ‘81 Traded sets with another SportLots purchase or some TCDB trades, but the big one keeping me from that run is a 1983 Topps Traded Darryl Strawberry rookie card. I don’t get it. Cheapest copies I can find are 25-30 bucks plus shipping. I feel like it should be closer to the 10 dollar range. Somewhere around the Mattingly or Gooden rookie would be. Straw was good, but Mattingly should be in the Hall of Fame, and his Topps rookie is cheaper. Is it a perfect storm where Strawberry was popular because he was a Met and Yankee and the 1983 Topps set was hard to find?  Are they priced better at shows, or do I at least have a chance to get it down to the 10-15 dollar range if I haggle?  

I selected the multiple packages option with SportLots, and I realize next time I need to stay with sellers that ship to the site and just request shipment when I get a huge box. Overall, I think I am getting familiar with the site and can use it to my advantage next time. I guess I’ll be getting a ton of mail in the coming weeks. 

I also picked up the 2024 Topps complete set. Nothing unusual, except for the fact that when I opened the 5 card rookie image variation pack, it had 6 cards, with an extra Jasson Dominguez. I might hold on to it and if he becomes something special, it could be good trade bait. 

Today on the way home from work, I stopped at Target, hoping for some 2024 Topps Chrome or 2024 Donruss packs, but the only baseball they had was 1 blaster of Series 2 Topps, and a few of 2024 Panini Stars and Stripes. With a guarantee of 2 autographs or jersey cards in a blaster, I figured I would give it a shot.  

I hadn’t heard of any of the players, but that’s just the nature of the game with a product like this. The first 2 cards are all obviously Green parallels, and the next 5 are Opening Day parallels. 

The last 2 cards on the previous pic and first 5 on this one are Star parallels. I pulled not only 2 autographs, but got a bonus jersey card. The jersey card was a cool pull, because Pablo Torres is a student at Bethune-Cookman University, which is located in Daytona, about a 45 minute drive from me. I actually know a science professor who teaches there. I’ll have to try to attend a game next season and see if I can get Pablo to sign it. 

Yesterday was also a kind of big day for me in the music area, as my first CD was released on iTunes and all of the usual platforms. My brother-in-law JT and I have been making music of all sorts since I first met him in 2001. We’ve done Christian music under the name ‘Resiliency from Obscurity’, and we’ve done comedy-type music under the moniker ‘The Younger Griffin’. In the past month, JT has taken a few songs he’s written lyrics for, a few songs I’ve done lyrics for and some ideas we’ve had, put some AI music to it, and cobbled everything together for an 11-song Younger Griffin collection entitled ‘We might be Artificially Intelligent’.  I wish we could’ve done the music, but that would’ve taken a few months and lots of patience. Maybe a Resiliency CD will have some of my original music. 

I am proud to have written all of the lyrics to ‘Liberate the Penguins’, most of the lyrics to ‘ Credit Misery’, and  some of the lyrics to ‘Soccer is Death’. 

If you want to take a look at the album and maybe get a listen, check is out at our website. We have a news song about pumpkin spice coming out in a few weeks. So, yeah. Send us money. 

That’s about all I have. Thanks for checking out my latest post, and if you find a spare Strawberry rookie or know of a decently priced one, let me know. 

-Jeremy