An interesting thing happened today. As I was walking home from the Olive Way Starbucks, I stumbled upon a nearby garage sale. And I noticed several coffee mugs on a table. Even at a distance, I could see that one of the mugs appeared to be a Seattle city series mug produced by Starbucks. I picked it up. Lo and behold, I was stunned to see that it was the rare “mistake” mug from 2003. I had onlyheard about this mug but never actually seen one before. It’s extremely rare.
In 2003, Starbucks produced a coffee mug that erroneously spelled Mount Rainier as “Mount Ranier” on its side. I don’t even know of any other Starbucks typo-mug that is not a one-time misprint due to a manufacturing error. In this case, Starbucks simply spelled Mount Rainier incorrectly, and the mugs were correctly manufactured mugs with the misspelling on them. I’ve heard it said that when the spelling error was finally caught, they were pulled from the shelves.
I already tweeted about finding this, so for those of you who are reading my@SbuxMel tweets, I apologize that this is a duplicate. I definitely thought this was worth highlighting this find since many of my readers either do not follow my tweets and/or might not have seen that tweet. And if you have this mug, hang on to it! I do know that a number of my readers are collectors of coffee mugs, and just in case you’re an avid collector of mugs, I have seen Starbucks mugs show up now and then on this “I love coffee mugs” Facebook page. (Just case you need a suggestion of a coffee mug Facebook page to follow.)
Garage sales are so much fun!
Starbucks City Mugs 
i was wondering how much this mug would cost now?
It’s really hard to say because it’s pretty much whatever a collector is willing to pay for a discontinued mug.
There are a few sites that list the mistake mug as the rarest of all Starbucks items. The biggest problem with obtaining full value (in my opinion) is they go up for sale so rarely. One sold on Ebay recently for $1,025 (with a 2003 black and white city scenes mug included as well (but I think we can all agree that one being included didn’t sway the price). It was listed as used, but looked like new with only minor contact chips.
There are many mugs that have sold for much more in new and used condition. A Washington DC Iwo Jima mug was listed for $16,000 and sold for “best offer” so we don’t know what the actual sale price was. So it comes down to “whatever the market will bear”….