General Forum

We all have cards that are hard to find or in some cases expensive. Maybe it’s a 1 of 1 or a numbered to 10 etc. Putting all this aside, what is one card in your collection that is super hard to find, but isn't considered valuable, rare, or highly sought after? Mine is a 2007 Upper Deck Star Signings Sean Casey Auto (SP). When this set came out in 2007 I started chasing down all the Tigers players. I managed to collect all of them except for one...Sean Casey, "The Mayor." After many years of looking, I was starting to have my doubts that it ever existed. There was next to no information about this card other than what was found in checklists as SP.  There were no pictures of this card either.  One evening, several years ago, I did an eBay search for all the items, like this card, that I am searching for and low and behold there was one listed. It had a Buy It Now with Best Offer on the listing. I wasn’t about to risk someone else getting it so I just purchased it rather than making an offer. To this day I still occasionally search for this card and even check sold items from several sources and nothing appears.  The only image I've found for this card is the one I submitted for TCDB. I'm sure more exist in someone shoebox, but it was by far the hardest card for me to locate outside of value, limited production, and desirability.  

I wanted a card of "Smoky" Joe Wood who was a pitcher for the Red Sox in the early 20th century before hurting his arm. Scoured eBay for quite a while and put out the word on various hobby sites until another member of one sold me a 1915 Cracker Jack Smoky which I still have.

1994-95 Topps Embossed #57, Micheal Williams. I opened a box of that set sometime before 1998, came up one card should, and wasn't able to find it until 2016 when I got it on COMC. I even had somebody on Beckett tell me that they had it but wouldn't send it to me because it wasn't worth the effort even though I offered to pay for both it and the shipping. 

I'm sure I'll struggle to find other cards in the future but right now the most difficult card I've got is the 1963 Topps Pumpsie Green for the Mets. It just took a LONG time to get and I got it by enlisting someone going to a card show to get it for me .

I have a pretty narrow pc (specific team and specific uni) but have been confounded on finding a few that are "regional" which seem to be considered advertising or giveaways(throwaways? ie 1997 Viking  components Lou Holtz. Just reminded of the saying....just because its rare, doesnt make it valuable....ie a $15-20 team set that ive found at $50 (some people will say then its a $50 set, lol but one of the places I seen it the dealer said it was priced at $15 until I expressed interest in it so the price went up to $50....he actually said that! wth??

Probably can think of a few better ones that this, but in 2018 I ordered a Topps-branded tshirt from Homage.com and got an unannounced exclusive 12-card Topps set with my shirt. There is ever only a couple expensive listings on ebay for the set or a random single. I submitted it on here a couple years after it was released after I realized how this probably completely flew under the radar. Beckett had an article on it: https://www.beckett.com/news/2018-topps-homage-baseball-cards/ It has Harper and Scherzer for my Nats PC but I still have it in the box it came in. 

Some other tough cards I intended for my PC are probably my Dave McNally Expos postcards and a oddball Jeff Ballard card from the 1994 Pittsburgh Pirates oversize Quintex team issue. I've never seen the Ballard card not autographed, I believe some cards in the set were not released with the stadium giveaway but released for autograph signings and appearances. I literally got the unsigned card from him when he looked through my collection and saw I didn't have it. 

1978 Topps Chicago Cubs team card. Was the last card I needed for the set and took me about a year and a half to finally find one.

Mine would be my 1982 Tcma Oneonta Yankees John Elway. I was 12 when this came out and I live in Indiana, so getting ahold of it then would have been a task. When eBay came along he was way to popular as a bronco to afford it. Found a team set still in it's original wrap about 6 years ago. The original price tag said a whopping$2.50 

A Derrie Nelson card

One of the Ric Flair cards from 1991 Impel Stomp Collection.  I was missing just that card from one of the largest wrestling sets out there.  I didn't know about COMC yet.  Shops rarely carry wrestling singles.  But I finally got it, and now I don't even remember where.  Possibly a trade on this site.  It's been a while.