Been There Ornaments – country of origin

Not sure how important this information will be for most collectors, however, I feel obligated to bring this new interesting fact to your attention. If you collected Been There Ornaments from the very beginning, you probably noticed that all the US and Canada ornaments have a “Made in Thailand” label on the bottom. It was different, however, for some ornaments from Asia, like the Philippines, these were made in China. For instance, you can see Pennsylvania and Philippines ornaments side by side at the very top of the collage.… Read more

Mainland China Been There ornaments

What you see is the picture of the brand new Been There Ornaments released for Mainland China. There are thirteen cities and one country ornament revealed so far. The city ones match the design and the color palette of the bigger mugs (I reviewed them in my previous post). The country ornament, however, is special in at least two ways. First, there is no matching bigger mug for it, at least for now. And the second distinctive feature is the use of gold colors in the design.… Read more

Been There Series comes to China

The reveal of the new mugs for China is always a huge deal. When Starbucks was done with releasing YAHs from Zhongguo (the Middle Kingdom/country in Mandarin), we were left with eighty-one regular mugs and that not counting six Christmas mugs. And just to give it more context, it is even more than the US subset! That just shows us how valuable the Chinese market is for Starbucks and how confident the company is in the demand for these mugs.… Read more