"He that seeketh findeth" (Matthew 7:8, King James version). Well, most likely my faith hasn't been strong enough, because I have seeked. There were (at least) four missing albums in my cd collection seven years ago, read more here (opens in a new window). Today, these four albums are still missing.
Missing 1 July 2014 and 5 September 2021, respectively
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Collecting falls within the second and anal stage in Sigmund Freud's theory of psychosexual development. In short, an obscure activity. And collecting cd albums in extremely small editions, self-released or released on small record labels that no longer exist is even more obscure. Collecting is hard and not suitable for the inveterate pessimist. First, the difficulty level should be considerable. Second, your collection isn't going to be complete. Hard facts. There are few new additions in my cd collection. Of course, this is expected when the difficulty level rises and there's only a few missing albums out there that eludes you. I practise several search methods. Systematic and random trawling is one of them. Monitoring through wantlists, wishlists and saved searches is another. Contacting, stalking and harassing people is a third method. I have never seen any of the albums above for sale online. I didn't even know how the Podunk album cover looked like until recently when someone made a submission on Discogs. This is some success. The album cover is now public knowledge. There's a imminent risk that these albums will be "the four missing albums". A true collector is a person who has realized the meaninglessness of life, but is still pursuing his (it's always a he) mission.