Starbucks Seattle mug: Discovery Series

What's on the mug

1. 1
   SEATTLE lettering

   SEATTLE is printed in golden-yellow capitals across a large dark green circle in the middle of the front.

2. 2
   Space Needle

   A tall teal tower with yellow struts, a wide saucer-shaped top with a row of pink and pale windows, an orange and yellow cap and a thin spire rises left of the lettering. The narrow waist, the saucer top house and the spire match the Space Needle, the 605-foot tower built for the 1962 World's Fair. The mug doesn't name it.^[1][7]

3. 3
   Dragon, possibly a nod to the Chinatown-International District

   An orange dragon with yellow scales and a pale grey mane coils around a pale teal tower in front of a purple building with dark blue windows, its open jaws pointing at the lettering. It may stand for Seattle's Chinatown-International District, where Chinese dragon sculptures sit on lampposts along Jackson Street. The mug doesn't name it.^[8]

4. 4
   Laptop showing a mountain that looks like Mount Rainier

   An open dark blue laptop with an orange base sits below the lettering; its screen shows a single broad snow-capped peak under pink clouds. The peak looks like Mount Rainier, which locals call "the Mountain" and which stands about 59 miles south-southeast of Seattle, but the drawing is too simple to be sure. The mug doesn't name it.^[11]

5. 5
   Ferry

   A pink and pale mint boat with a row of round-cornered windows outlined in orange and a small wheelhouse rides on pale teal waves at the lower right. It may stand for Seattle's ferries, but it is not drawn in the Washington State Ferries livery of white with green trim, so it may be a generic boat. The mug doesn't name it.^[12]

6. 6
   Crab, probably a Dungeness crab

   An orange-red crab with pale spots and raised claws sits at the upper right of the green circle, on a pale grey tray with the shellfish and a shrimp. It is probably a Dungeness crab, the crab named after the Dungeness Spit in Washington, though the drawing shows no feature that rules out other crabs. The mug doesn't name it.^[9]

7. 7
   Electric guitar, perhaps a nod to Jimi Hendrix

   A blue electric guitar with a double-cutaway body, a pale mint pickguard with a yellow lightning bolt and a six-tuner headstock angles up right of the lettering. The body shape resembles a Fender Stratocaster, the guitar most associated with Seattle-born Jimi Hendrix, but it could equally stand for the city's music scene in general. The mug doesn't name a musician.^[10]

8. 8
   Shellfish and a shrimp

   Five blue-grey shells with pink insides, drawn like oysters or mussels, scatter above the lettering beside a pink shrimp. The drawing does not make the kind of shellfish clear.

9. 9
   Rain clouds

   Two pale grey-green clouds hang at the upper left, the larger one beside the Space Needle, with pink and pale teal raindrops falling below them.

10. 10
    Glass of beer

    A stemmed glass of amber-orange beer with a white foam head stands near the left edge of the photo, beside the falling hop cones (11).

11. 11
    Hop cones

    Four small dark pink cones with green stems and leaves fall beside the beer glass. They look like hop cones drawn in pink rather than green, which may point to Washington's Yakima Valley, one of the world's main hop-growing areas. The mug doesn't name them.^[13]

12. 12
    Crane lifting a coffee cup that looks like a Starbucks cup

    A thin construction crane at the left swings a white takeaway cup with a dark green circle on it above the rooftops. The cup looks like a Starbucks cup, a likely nod to the company's founding in Seattle in 1971, near Pike Place Market; the crane may stand for the city's building boom. The mug doesn't say.^[14]

13. 13
    Lemon wedge and corn cob

    A lemon wedge drips juice above the crab, and a yellow corn cob with a pink end lies under it on the same pale tray as the shellfish, together like a seafood boil.

14. 14
    City towers

    A cluster of flat-roofed towers in coral, pink, yellow, pale teal and purple, with grid windows, fills the lower left behind the dragon and the Space Needle. None is drawn with a feature that ties it to a named building.

15. 15
    Pale figure at the left edge

    A tall pale grey shape with a small dark eye rises at the very left edge of the photo, beside a dark blue sign. It continues round the side opposite the handle, which no photo shows, so it cannot be identified.

The photo shows one side of the mug. The back and the area behind the handle are out of view.

Collector notes

• The inside of this mug is mint green, which shows clearly at the rim in the photo.
• The Space Needle and the dragon sit left of the lettering, while the ferry, the laptop, the crab and the guitar sit to the right.

Other Seattle mugs

Different series, different mugs. Check the series name before you buy.

Hidden Starbucks cup

Starbucks says a to-go cup is hidden in every Discovery Series design. On the front of the mug, a white to-go cup with a green dot sits near the dragon. Where the hidden cup is on other mugs

About the Discovery Series

• Discovery Series vs Been There Series: the differences
• How to display and store a Starbucks mug collection
• Where the hidden cup is on each Discovery Series mug
• Starbucks Discovery Series mugs list