My first Sportlots dive is a smashing success

I am slowly moving into the 21st century, and along with that comes buying cards online. I have obviously purchased on Ebay, but not really anywhere else.  I have not bought from COMC or BaseballCardStore.ca yet.  Maybe soon.  But I decided to jump in on Sportlots. And my first ever Sportlots order went rather well.  I bought cards from several sellers, but not enough to take advantage of the Sportlots Box option.

My main purpose was to make some progress on my 2011 Topps Chrome Refractors set build.  I hadn't scratched anything off that list for what seemed like a year.  So I knocked off about 40!  I still need several big ones: Mantle, Ichiro, Pujols, Verlander, Kershaw and (ouch) Freddie Freeman.  The Freeman may keep me from completing this set in the long run, but right now I am at 175/220 cards, or 79.5% complete.  So I gotta try.  Anyone have a Freeman for trade, I would love a crack at it. Or any of them left on my wantlist!

I also picked up some new McGwires.  I think there were about 20.  I already put them away, so no pics.  I am now at 1240 unique McGwires.

OK, time for some pics.  

The next thing I grabbed was some 2018 Diamond Kings Aurora inserts.  I recently got the Lindor from this set, and I really liked the look.  These are probably old hat for most of you, but I had not really seen them before.  So I went and grabbed a bunch of them!

They look pretty sweet all together like that.  I still need #1 George Springer and #10 Shohei Ohtani to complete the set.  Anyone got those they want to trade?  I wonder when Panini will get with the program and make insert sets that have a total number of cards divisible by nine.  These would look great on a single page in a binder, but having to put the 10th card on a separate page is a bit of a letdown.

Daniel from Its Like Having My Own Card Shop recently showed off his completed sets of the Fleer ProVisions cards from 1991-95, and inspired me to do the same.  They are beautiful little insert sets, and should be easy to finish up.  I grabbed about 10 of them from various years.  Here are my current incomplete sets.  If anyone has any I am missing, I would love to trade for them!

1991:

I have the complete run of the regular inserts, with the black borders.  The 4 white bordered cards were factory set only, and I only have the Henderson.  This was the original Pro Visions set, and still may be the best.  Some really great cards in there.

Need:

Factory set 1 - Barry Bonds

Factory set 3 - Ryne Sandberg

Factory set 4 - Dave Stewart

1992: Frank is lonely.  For some reason, I only have 1 of the 6 cards in this set. But then, this is probably my least favorite of the whole run. They are not bad at all, just the 'least great'.  Gotta get to work I guess!

Need:

1 - Robin Yount

2 - Ken Griffey Jr

3 - Nolan Ryan

4 - Cal Ripken Jr

6 - Dave Justice

1993:

I think this will be the toughest of the remaining sets to complete.  Help me out!

3 - Gary Sheffield

4 - Andy Van Slyke

5 - Tom Glavine

6 - Cecil Fielder

Need: 3 - Matt Williams.  I love the creativity.  I also love how each row kind of fits together to make a 3 card panorama.  It's not perfect though.  Look at the Ozzie and Juan cards.  The 'yellow brick road' continues from Ozzie onto Juan's card, but the sky does not match up.  Kind of strange to go to the effort but not complete it.

Complete! These are beautiful, and again, I love how they fit together.  I also get a kick out of the jumping fish on Salmon's card.

And the last card I will highlight from my order was just that.  A highlight!

I purchased a 2017 Topps Update Cody Bellinger RC.  I was supposed to get #US38 (the cheapest Bellinger in the set).  It cost me 98 cents. But the seller had accidentally sent it out in another package.  He contacted me and asked if I would take the #US50 Bellinger instead. At the time, I didn't know the difference, or why Topps put more than one Bellinger in their update set.  Since I was just looking for any decent Bellinger RC, I messaged him a yes.  Then I went and looked at the difference in price between the two on COMC and Ebay.  (Yes, I know there are probably better ways to value a card, but they give a ballpark at least) The price difference was bigger than I thought, so I messaged the seller saying that it was OK by me if he didn't want to send the replacement.  But I never heard back from him.

Anyway, when the cards came, sure enough, there was Bellinger #US50.  OK, cool.  So I went out to try to look it up again, and found that COMC had a different photograph than the card I have.  So off I went to TCDB.com to see what the deal was and...  Wow, he sent me the SSP variation!!

Not the SP.  The SSP!!

Honestly, I like the photos on the regular and SP versions better than this, but it's tough to complain!! It's also hard to gauge the value of this card.  But it isn't insignificant!  There are no copies on COMC, and on Ebay, there are only 4 copies, all graded.  The asking prices range from $499 (an 8.5 grade) to $2490 (a 9.5).  Those prices seem pretty unrealistic though.  I'm sure an ungraded copy would go for significantly less, and I don't plan on grading it.

The card is not actively up for trade, but I am open to offers, of course.  I really like Bellinger, and definitely wanted a good RC of his.  But this is ridiculous. Or overkill.  Words fail me.

I'm pretty sure I will go spend more money with the seller who was so generous.  Not because I think this kind of thing could happen again, but because he deserves some more of my cash!