2009 Topps Heritage Past & Present Real Ones Dual Autographs

Set Type: Insert
Card dimensions: 2½” x 3½”
Additional Information Seeded in packs of 2009 Topps Heritage. Cards are hand serial-numbered to 25 on the front, and the cards are autographed directly by the players.
14,000 Phillies Commentary: I would love to see more cards/sets like this — albeit with slightly higher print runs. The Wine-Ibañez card is the newest addition (card #17,753) to the 14,000 Phillies Collection, and I feel like I got really lucky on the price I acquired it for. In fact, I spent less on it than I did for the Ibañez solo-signed 2010 Topps Heritage Real One Autograph when I purchased it a few years ago. However, I don’t think I will ever get as fortunate on the cost should I ever discover that there’s another Phillips-Howard card available on the market.

RODA-PH RODA-WI

Taylor Phillips & Ryan Howard Bobby Wine & Raúl Ibañez

The Missing 1960 Topps Bobby Wine Card

Featured Card: 2009 Topps Heritage Real Ones Autographs Red Ink #ROA-BW, Bobby Wine

A couple years ago, Topps corrected an injustice. Back in 1960, they didn’t include Bobby Wine in the set. It’s actually rather understandable as he was only 21 at the time and appeared in just four games at the end of the season. Additionally, he didn’t appear in the majors at all in 1961, thus further justifying Topps’s decision. But in 2009, when the time came to dust off the 1960 set for use in that year’s Heritage offering, they created a 1960 Bobby Wine card for him to sign for that year’s Real One Autographs inserts. At the time, I was so excited to see a Bobby Wine certified autograph card that I didn’t even notice that he didn’t have a card in the original 1960 set. In fact, I didn’t realize what Topps had done until I started scanning my collection earlier this year.

Topps could have waited until 2012, when they use the 1963 design — the year they finally issued Wine’s rookie card — in order to issue a Wine Real One Autograph, but they did this instead. Upon further reflection, including a “Cards That Never Were” insert series seems like a natural for the Heritage set, and I don’t understand why Topps doesn’t make this a regular part of the offering. It’s probably too late for Topps to include it in the 2012 edition (which is a shame, because a 1963 Dick Allen or Chris Short card would be awesome — hat tip to Jim over at The Phillies Room for mentioning them as candidates for such a treatment in his post on the 1963 set), but there’s plenty of time for Topps to pull off such inserts starting with the 2013 Heritage set.

Will do they do it? Not bloody likely, but I can always hold out hope that one day Topps will surprise me in a good way.