Two Colt .45s cards

I have a certain fascination with cards of teams that no longer are.  The teams on my list (in what I might call the modern era) would be the Boston Braves, St. Louis Browns, Philadelphia Athletics, New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, Washington Senators, Milwaukee Braves, Kansas City Athletics, Seattle Pilots, Washington Senators again, and Montreal Expos.  The Houston Colt .45s aren't really on that list since the team still exists; they've just been renamed.  But still getting a couple of Colt .45s card feels to me like it fits in with the project of making sure all these teams are represented in my collection.  So I wanted to get a couple of Colt .45s cards, and here they are.

1963 Pepsi Rusty Staub.

Card back.

I've mentioned a few times that I love Pepsi about as much as I love baseball cards, so baseball cards with a Pepsi logo always draw me in.  Unfortunately the few 1990s Pepsi cards (see here for a Rickey Henderson and here for a Bobby Bonilla) were terrible cards.  Then I have a bunch of the 1970s MSA discs, which I haven't shown yet.  But this is a card with a nice (slightly old-fashioned at this point, which is a plus) Pepsi logo on the front, and it features a well-known player of the Colt .45s.  This is a great card but the only downside is that it's not really on usual card stock.  It's slightly thicker than just paper, but not what we're used to for card thickness.  Still, very happy to have this in my binder.

1963 Topps Manny Mota.

Card back.

Then I thought I would get another Colt .45s card, from a regular Topps issue.  There are a few years to choose from, and I picked this 1963 Manny Mota.  A great thing about this card is that Manny Mota, through his long and illustrious career, never played for the Colt .45s.  The back shows only minor leage experience and then a debut with the Giants in 1962.  He was traded from San Francisco to Houston in November, 1962, then Topps made this card I guess, and then in April, 1963 he was traded to Pittsburgh.  So he played 1963-1968 for the Buccos, and then 1969 in Montreal, and the rest of his playing career through 1982 with the Dodgers.  He coached for the Dodgers for many years as well.  He had two World Series championships with them in 1981 and 1988.

Thanks for reading!