Starbucks collectibles

Starbucks Collectibles are products manufactured by Starbucks Corporation and include Starbucks' cards, Starbucks' mugs, Starbucks' posters, and almost anything and everything manufactured or printed by Starbucks Corporation. The Starbucks Collectibles secondary market has existed since the inception of Starbucks and the Starbucks card collectible trading market has existed since the first Starbucks card was manufactured in 2001. In the month of May 2013, there were between 26,000 and 37,000 Starbucks' item auctions on eBay every day. In the summer of 2013, auctions for Starbucks rose to over 40,000 auctions daily.

Starbucks Corporation has watched the secondary market trading its cards for more than a decade on eBay and capitalized on the market by introducing the Starbucks Steel card limited release of 5,000 in 2012. According to Forbes, “The Starbucks Steel Card is Now Selling For More Than Twice Its Face Value On EBay”. The highest price ever paid for a single Starbucks card not loaded with money value was $10,277.00 on January 27, 2011 despite the fact that the card was only ten years old which rivals the value of a 1940 Joe DiMaggio Baseball card which is set at $1,265.74. www.buckscards.com has posted the issuance of every single card manufactured by Starbucks Corporation since its inception in 2001, from every single country in the world.

Starbucks Corporation actually boosts the secondary market by creating mugs and cards that are regional. For instance, in 2013, there were regional cards only released in the city on the card. These included New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, and the first county card for Orange County, California. This creates a frenzy of buying as collectors swarm to buy from other cities across the U.S. on eBay. Starbucks also released that year a series of mugs along the same lines with their "You Are Here" mug collection so that collectors again had to resort to eBay to get a complete collection. Starbucks promotes these releases on their blog.

Another section of the Starbucks secondary market that is fast-growing is the resale of Partner (the term for a Starbucks employee) items. This includes the resale of Partner cards, Partner reward pins, Partner booklets, Partner hats and aprons, and Starbucks stickers and stamps.

A similar collector movement that gained momentum as quickly happened with Disneyana in the 1980s.

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