i need 2 more cards to finish my "Collect Em All" quest, and both cards are ONLY sold by claywich merchant.
problem is he's not there, i only noticed he's missing after going after cards which was way before i saved him from bandits.

idk what to do. please help.

The Claywich merchant sells *five* cards, not two, so are you absolutely certain you haven't already visited him? Which cards are you missing?

i'm missing, sweers and pttkahammer. And es i'm pretty sure i have not visited him, bandit camp on island is empty and no merchant at claywich. (he never returned to the village)
and i have no idea how i got the other cards, perhaps from random wins.

I suppose it's possible, but from all the information I can find, those five cards(**) are only available from the Claywich merchant.

**
Sweers
Puttkammer
Black Infantry Archer 1 (of 2)
Etolian Auxiliary Archer 2 (of 2)
Crinfrid Reavers Dragon Hunter 2 (of 3)

Are you sure you are speaking to the correct merchant, because there's two that go to Claywich. The one that you rescue goes (from memory) to a house in the north west of the town, and ONLY shows during the day time.

there is a known bug with this quest. if you don't clear the other bandits from the bridge first (the ones demanding a toll) and the bandit camp next to the bridge the merchant may not show up at Claywich. sometimes he does, other times not.

this doesn't help you get the cards but may explain why he's not there.

the other person you rescue and that tells you to meet him in claywich is the barber. and he never showed up on my current play through, I'm missing one card in velen and think it maybe from the barber, though can't remember if he plays gwent or not.

Yeah i am sure, i have other 3 cards because they are duplicates, so for the quest it counts as long as i have one of them.
i looked it up and this bug mentioned a while ago (almost a year ago) but they never fixed it. i don't see any other way unless i spawn the cards in, or CDPR patch it. and no way i'm restarting my game again. But what do you mean by "it doesn't help me with cards?" He's only one who sells them and there are no duplicates anywhere for those cards. and i have the barber in claywich, he doesn't sell any cards. only play gwent.

at this point you have 2 basic options.
1 - reload to an earlier save before you freed the merchant and try again.
2 - install the debug console from... http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1555/? and just spawn the cards you're missing. (the console commands are at a link on that page). no idea if spawning the cards will still get you the achievement.

as the missing merchant is a bug there's not much else you can do.

Yeah, I didn't want to spawn anything but this is not my fault and I have no choice with the save option, (i don't see any saves from that old), i so i ended up installing debug console. thanks you help :D