Best Routes to Find Rare Cards?

[BrookIsland]

Wondering what you all have found to be the most successful means to find rare/super rare cards that you're trying to acquire, whether for your PC or otherwise.

I've now been on the hunt for a series of /5 cards from an 19-20 UD set for months, which is not that long by the standards of a number of sets that many of you seem to be after. But would love to make some headway...

What have you all found to be the best routes to secure the cards you're looking for?

To date, I've used (with varying degrees of success):

1. Customized, expansive saved searches (with sometimes extensive refreshing during the day! ) in eBay

2. Posts in various Facebook groups with varying frequency

3. Posts in forums like this one

Any other good ways? I was thinking of setting up a Google alert potentially and/or trying to troll through Instagram, though not sure of the value proposition there and looking for the most efficient means possible.

(As an aside, have any of you tried to use tech solutions like machine learning/AI to troll through break videos on YouTube/Facebook to find hits? Would obviously need to find a programmer to design something to make that work but would be amazing to be able to use some form of search function that would bring to the point in a break where a card that you've searched comes up. Bonus points if the search function tells you who hit the card in the break.)

Thanks all.

 

[Chillychow]

You've hit all the strategies I use when I'm on the hunt for specific cards. I typically have a few 'minor' PC's in play so I tend to find something to fill one of them every so often. That being said, it's been years since I've added something to a few of my sets. Sadly, I always had the most fun, and the best luck, hunting cards at the Expo. You never know what a seller might stick in the corner of a display. Hopefully that returns to our hobby while I'm still on this side of the lawn. Good luck!

 

[junyab]

www.comc.com

 

[HammerHawks]

Check out the White Whale episode of Center Ice Card Cast! Aaron (creasecollector) and I discussed this exact topic during the episode.

 

[jdg573]

For me I find it's more difficult because there are too many groups or sites. I liked it better on this site for example when I first joined. I barely had to leave the site to find what I was looking for as there was lots of action on here. Now I make very few trades or purchases on here

 

[odjickfan]

For me I find it's more difficult because there are too many groups or sites. I liked it better on this site for example when I first joined. I barely had to leave the site to find what I was looking for as there was lots of action on here. Now I make very few trades or purchases on here

Back in the days, it was so easy to deal on low-end stuff. I remember the old days of the Beckett message boards and people moving here. The forum was loaded with box breaks of all kinds. Now, I think I haven't seen a single MVP 20-21 break.

 

[BrookIsland]

Thanks all for the replies here - haven't had any luck at all on COMC for any of the cards I'm looking for but I'll give that a try. Grateful for any other suggestions and HammerHawks - will check out your video to see what I can glean and leverage in my search!

 

[creasecollector]

Post everywhere so you can cast as big of a net as you possibly can.

 

[weasel-king]

The internet is a blessing a curse.

You have to pay attention to breakers. As there tend to be more and more that pop up over time, lots of cards go to people who generally aren't going to want them. They buy a team and don't necessarily want all the players if there is only one they PC, or if someone is hoping for goalies and gets all skaters. Of course, you may not know who the winners are (usually a username or eBay name is mentioned), but if the breakers have groups themselves hang out there.

Worst case, you'll know because they will drop in other groups with a hearty (and unfortunate) "Hey, I just won this in a break, any idea what it's worth?".

Also, Google Images searches. I have had people contact me through email when they were searching for specific cards on Google Images and hit my site.

 

[99goals]

Patience..

 

[Uhtred the Viking]

All great strategies that you’ve listed in our ever changing marketplace. I know it might seem like a lightweight option right now, but Instagram has been heating up for hockey cards. Follow some hashtags for your player (or serial #) to find results more quickly. Even getting to know other members (eg. in Europe) will give you eyes in other places. As Aaron has said, post everywhere, maybe set up your own site (eg. Weebly) so that people can view your collection and see if you need a specific card.

The most important suggestion I can give you, is get to know some of your fellow collectors, especially those with similar interests. I’ve had other collectors phone me (obviously a close friend) or even text me from the Expo (which I’ve never been to) about some very special cards, some of them #1/1. When someone says to you “I saw this card and thought of you” there is no better feeling in the world than when you can add that monster card to your pc. I have added a lot of great cards this way that never saw the light of day on eBay or any other platform. Best of luck in your hunt.

 

[hockeyguy2006]

For me I find it's more difficult because there are too many groups or sites. I liked it better on this site for example when I first joined. I barely had to leave the site to find what I was looking for as there was lots of action on here. Now I make very few trades or purchases on here

Yep, the hobby is now fragmented between hundreds if not thousands of sites/groups instead of the 5-10 big ones that existed in the past.

 

[Kharlamov17]

Patience..

Ding ding ding!

 

[BrookIsland]

The internet is a blessing a curse.

You have to pay attention to breakers. As there tend to be more and more that pop up over time, lots of cards go to people who generally aren't going to want them. They buy a team and don't necessarily want all the players if there is only one they PC, or if someone is hoping for goalies and gets all skaters. Of course, you may not know who the winners are (usually a username or eBay name is mentioned), but if the breakers have groups themselves hang out there.

Worst case, you'll know because they will drop in other groups with a hearty (and unfortunate) "Hey, I just won this in a break, any idea what it's worth?".

Also, Google Images searches. I have had people contact me through email when they were searching for specific cards on Google Images and hit my site.

I definitely take your point on the breaks. It feels similarly like an increasingly fragmented marketplace (as hockeyguy2006 says) with more and more hobby breakers that are not AIR/CDDs taking to breaking on Facebook and in other places.

This is what I was thinking to see whether there was some form of machine learning/AI solution (i.e., Google spiders but for YouTube and/or Facebook videos) that go do the work of viewing all of the videos and index them to make searching them much faster. Hard to find the time and/or justify it to spend going to thousands of hours of break videos. There has to be a better solution to this.

Google Image searches is a good call too - that's how I've confirmed some of the cards in this set which aren't in the UD official checklist. Unfortunately, they've all taken me to long forgotten eBay listings...

Patience..

Indeed...!

All great strategies that you’ve listed in our ever changing marketplace. I know it might seem like a lightweight option right now, but Instagram has been heating up for hockey cards. Follow some hashtags for your player (or serial #) to find results more quickly. Even getting to know other members (eg. in Europe) will give you eyes in other places. As Aaron has said, post everywhere, maybe set up your own site (eg. Weebly) so that people can view your collection and see if you need a specific card.

The most important suggestion I can give you, is get to know some of your fellow collectors, especially those with similar interests. I’ve had other collectors phone me (obviously a close friend) or even text me from the Expo (which I’ve never been to) about some very special cards, some of them #1/1. When someone says to you “I saw this card and thought of you” there is no better feeling in the world than when you can add that monster card to your pc. I have added a lot of great cards this way that never saw the light of day on eBay or any other platform. Best of luck in your hunt.

Thanks very much for the well wishes and to confirm your second paragraph, I've tried to do exactly that in using my (small) card network to be an extension of my own eyes and ears. I don't know any of you well enough for that to extend here but hopefully with time that'll change--