Why trust these numbers

The same mug, the same week, in three places.

Wisconsin. Listed as rare. Asking
Three days later, still unsold.

Wisconsin. Another seller, same week. Asking

What that series actually goes for. Sold
Two mugs, marked sold by the seller.

One of those sellers is wrong. Without knowing what things actually sell for, you cannot tell which — and almost nobody knows what things actually sell for.

The problem

Everyone is guessing from everyone else's guesses.

Ask a collector what a mug is worth and they will check what other people are asking for it, then price slightly under. That is not their fault. It is the only number available.

Sold prices are almost impossible to see. The big auction site closed its sold data to outsiders. Most trades between collectors happen in private messages and leave no trace at all.

So an invented price can circulate for years, and each person who repeats it makes it look more real.

What we do instead: every price we record says whether it Sold or was only Asking, with the date and where it came from. If we do not know, it says Unknown and stays out of the maths.

What almost nobody records

Turn the mug over.

The front is the picture. The bottom is the money. Where it was made, what year, whether the barcode is still there — all of it is printed on the base, and all of it moves the price.

A barcode still on the bottom

+12.5%

Identical mug, identical seller, one week. Torn sticker against intact. Asking

Glass instead of ceramic

4×

Same series, same country, same week. The catalogues do not separate them. Asking

One version against another

6.3×

against . Both marked sold by the same seller, so this one is measured sold against sold. Sold

Show us the base of yours and we will tell you which one you have got. Nobody can work that out from the front.

One number cannot work

A common city mug, four countries, one week.

Where	Asked or paid
United States	Sold
Philippines	≈ Asking
Canada	≈ Asking
Germany	≈ Asking

Converted for comparison only. We always store what was actually paid, in the money it was paid in. These are not all the same series — which is part of the point, because nobody has ever put them side by side.

Publish a single worldwide figure and it is wrong for most of the people reading it. Prices here will always be regional, and always say how many sales they came from. Under five, and we will tell you it is too thin to price rather than invent one.

What we have not got

The list is incomplete, and it always will be.

Five days after this went live, three new releases turned up in a collectors' group that were not on our list. That will keep happening. Any catalogue that claims to be finished is either lying or has stopped looking.

So every entry carries a mark saying how far we would stand behind it:

Verified — a collector has photographed it, or we have held it

Listed — it appears in a published reference, or two collectors added it independently

Member added — one person says it exists. Nothing more than that yet

Disputed — someone says this is wrong, and it stays visible while we sort it out

Right now 571 mugs across 418 places, and not one of them is marked Verified, because nobody has photographed one for us yet. We would rather show you that than pretend.

Nothing ever gets quietly deleted either. If an entry turns out to be wrong it is marked as disputed and stays where it is — because somebody may own it, and because a list that silently loses things is no use for an insurance claim or a family sorting out an estate.

Rules we have written down

Five things this will never do.

Never buy, sell, or hold anything. There is no shop here and no middleman. We introduce two collectors and give them both the same honest numbers to agree on. What you settle on is between you.

Never earn a commission on anything we value. We will not take a cut of your sale. If we made money on trades we could not publish honest prices for the same mugs, and the prices are the point.

Never publish a figure we cannot back. Every price says how many sales it came from. Too few, and it says so instead of guessing.

Never fold the postage into the price. Shipping is recorded separately, always. On a cheap mug it can be most of what you paid.

Never convert your money without telling you. What you paid is stored in the currency you paid it in. Conversions happen on the screen, at the rate on the day of the sale, and are labelled.

It is free, and there is nothing to sign up for.

Tick off what you own, see the map fill in, and write down who you were with. It works with no signal, so it works in the shop.

Start ticking off my mugs

← Back to the start

I built this because I walked four and a half miles across Naples in the heat, stood in front of the one I actually needed, and walked away from it — because I could not check. If you collect these too, tell me what is missing and I will fix it.
Simon