New Mugs from Chicago (and beyond)

I have mentioned this once or twice, but in case you missed it, I collect Starbucks city mugs.  It all started when the Mister and I were dating and he brought me back a mug from a trip to Puerto Rico.  He decided that he would start doing that anytime he went somewhere and after a while I had a dozen mugs or so.  Then family and friends got on the bandwagon and would bring mugs from their trips and my collection steadily grew.

A couple years ago I discovered a site called Fred Orange (funny name, right?) where collectors could register and create lists of all their mugs and trade with other collectors.  This has been a huge boon to my collection as I have traded with people in Thailand, Germany, Spain and other countries.  Most mug traders are flight attendants and those who travel a lot for business, so most collectors have mugs from U.S. cities that have major airports, i.e. Chicago and New York.  For this reason, most trade requests I get are for local mugs that aren't at SeaTac: Portland, Vancouver Island and Pike Place Market (the first Starbucks has its own special mug).  I now have over a hundred mugs (you can see my full collection here) and just got a few more to add.

The Mister is a real geography nerd and enjoys adding new mugs to the collection, so plans all business flights around where the layovers are in order to pick up new mugs.  He went to Chicago last week for a class and even though the class was held just a few miles from his hotel, he put over 1,100 miles on the rental car in four days.  Why?  Starbucks mugs.  And also to add two more states to his tally of total states visited.  I think it's up to thirty-one now.

On the day he arrived, he drove straight from the airport to St. Louis and got there just in  time to take the last ride up to the top of the arch.  The pics of and from the arch are pretty cool and for you PNW-ers, it's a little bit taller than the Space Needle, which is already pretty tall.  Also, he picked-up three new St. Louis mugs, one for me and extras to trade.  Later in the week he hit Indianapolis and scored three Indy mugs and one Tampa mug.  Wait, what?  Apparently that Starbucks had accidentally gotten a shipment of Tampa mugs and since they weren't in the system, they gave him one gratis.  Awesome.

To clear up any questions, here are the basics on city mugs.  A lot of major cities around the world, as well as some countries and states or provinces, have a mug with the name of the city on it and a picture of something specific to that city.  Seattle mugs usually have the Space Needle, Mt. Rainier, or a ferry on them.   The mugs are only found at Starbucks stores near or in the city and are almost always found in Starbucks stores in airports.  This why it's so cool to get a mug from, say, Buenos Aires, because it originally came from Argentina.  (This mug is one of the last ones I traded for and my first from South America.)

It's kind of funny that all these mugs are red. I actually have mostly green mugs and from what I can tell, there is no rhyme or reason to the colors they pick for each city.

Do you collect anything?