Tony Miller makes some great strops. I am glad to see you are looking at one of his chocolate strops rather than the more expensive heirloom strops. When you are new to straight razors, you will find the "digital gymnastics" needed to strop a razor to be awkward. Nearly everyone puts nicks in the leather of their first strop. Although you can use fine sandpaper to smooth over those nicks, it will never look like new. Once you acquire the muscle memory to strop without nicking your strop, you can purchase a higher quality strop. I have one of Tony's heirloom strops and it is wonderful.

Pasted strops are used for several purposes. Some people find that they razor edges are too harsh/too keen. They use stropping compounds like Chromium oxide to smooth out the edge of their razor to make shaving more comfortable.

Some people have a coarse, tough beard and want an edge that is very keen. They use stropping compounds like sub-micron cubic boron nitride or synthetic polycrystalline diamond to make the edge sharper.

Then there are those who just use pastes to keep their razors sharp between honings. Until you acquire the skills and hones needed to maintain your own razors, you will need to send your blades out to a honemeister for sharpening on a periodic basis. Pasted strops can extend the interval between these professional honings.

If you are interested in trying some pasted strops, there are lots of substrates to use with abrasive pastes or sprays. You can use wood like balsa and basswood. You can use cloth like linen, cotton canvas, denim, polyester and compressed wool or nylon felt. You can use disposable substrates such as paper or newsprint. Although I have not yet tried it, I recently learned of a polyester fabric called Pellon that is available at fabric stores. Since most of these substrates are inexpensive, test several and see which you like best.

You can purchase abrasive pastes and sprays from many shaving suppliers. Do yourself a favor and purchase "razor quality" abrasives. The polishing compound crayons you get from the hardware store may work, but they are not designed for razors, so the particle size distribution is not tightly controlled.