General Forum

I collect a rather obscure player because of a long-running joke me and a friend had and I have a lot of his autos and parallels which have been relatively easy and cheap to find. However, I've only seen one printing plate of him on eBay for a ridiculous price. I checked every printing plate listed on this site and no one has one. Should I go to card shows and just pray I find them, are there other ways to search for printing plates, or should I just give up?

Don't give up.  Printing plates are simply rare to begin with and there is still a lot of product left in packs unopened yet, even older items from a few years ago. Also, there are just a lot of people who just hang on to such items and don't enter it here or on ebay, so they are just simply rare. Be patient, they might eventually show up on Ebay. Just put a saved search string together with an alert if/when they do show up on ebay you can jump on it before it gets bid up. Good luck!  I'm still chasing down 2 Golden Mirror Detroit Tigers from last year's Series 2 and they just never hit the sales wires.

Thanks, will do!! Golden mirrors were shaping up to be difficult for me as well. Ended up finding one on eBay for ~$24 in an auction. Best of luck on your Tigers!

Is Trevor Bauer obscure?

Not obscure at all! Great pitcher, and I hope he finds a new MLB home. Shame what he has been put through, because he is "different" and got caught up as the victim of a scam.

Could you have restricted this to purely collecting advice. Thank you.

To get the conversation back on track, this may be obvious, have you tried COMC? I have bought printing plates of my main PC player from there and they seem to pop up as frequently as anywhere.

I've purchased a couple on SportLots as well.

You may have to branch out to other sources besides eBay and TCDB.  I do this with a player that lives locally and played in the late 60 - early 70s.  I sourced Sportslots, eBay, Comic, TCDB of course and have pretty much picked up everything that I could find that I didn't already have...some of them were not on TCDB yet but I had them added once I acquire the card.  I know there are other sites out there, but those are the ones I frequent.    Regarding card shows...it's going to be hit and miss but ask the dealers as they don't bring everything they have to the show and networking can be just as rewarding when they say, "hey...I don't, but I know someone who collects him...let me check and get back with you."  If you haven't done so already and if you have a Facebook account...check some of the groups...again...its a networking thing. Enjoy the chase...the hunt is always fun and rewarding when you do find something unique and at a good price.  (if they card on eBay is super expensive, I'd suggest messaging the seller and see if he will take an offer.)