kkart and David657, if that's the experience both of you are having, it may work better for you if you go to the Browse menu and then pick the sport and year. Personally I find that it's easier to locate what I'm looking for that way because I'm also definitely the type to forget to change the sport in the dropdown in the regular search.
For what it's worth, while that search is fine in a few cases, this serves as a great reminder that for individual cards, going to the player's page and using the filter is usually the best way to ID something. It took me a bit to realize that that's the best way to find stuff based on how the site is designed, and now I rarely have to ask for help looking something up.