Hong Luong is the creator of Starbucks City Mugs, a colorful blog akin to a database dedicated to the collectibles found exclusively at Starbucks. Thanks to Hong and collectors such as her, we’ll be adding more than 4,000 Starbucks Mugs to the hobbyDB database with plenty of great images.

Hong recently shared some thoughts with us on her personal journey of collecting Starbucks Mugs, as well as some advice for those looking to begin collecting. Give her wonderful blog a look by following this link, then check back regularly here as these get added to our new segment of  Starbucks Mugs to hobbyDB (and reach out to us in the comments if you like to help with this)!

Over to you, Hong!

I got into collecting mugs seriously after a ladies’ trip to Napa/San Francisco. I wanted to buy a Starbucks SF mug while I was there, but didn’t get it as I thought I could just get it online.

That’s when I found out you could only buy it at the city/place it was named after and I found a Yahoo group that had collectors that you could trade mugs with.

Since I am from DC, I just offer DC mugs to other cities. My first mug was from Sacramento. It turns out their people were really nice. Most are honorable. I did learn later that there are some scammers, but I would say 95% of them are honest and want to help you with your collection.

I was fascinated by the closeness of the community and how kind, generous, and intelligent most collectors were and that’s why I was motivated to collect mugs.

It was also an inspiration to travel since I don’t really like traveling – but for mugs, I was more inspired.

I lost count of how many mugs I have because I just moved to a new house and half are in boxes and half are in cabinets. I was just too busy with everything going on in life and didn’t have time to update on the latest mugs.

Most of my mugs were from trading with other collectors and friends and family that travel would bring me back the mugs. When I was very active on my blog, I would post stories, but life got really busy and I also neglected my blog.

There are many stories on my blog about the mugs on my blog if someone happens to click on the ones that I posted about. So I am excited that all of my work gets preserved now here on hobbyDB.

My advice would be to join the community with other traders. Everyone is very helpful and looks out for one another. Happy collecting! It has brought me many fond memories.