A Belarusian woman collected 1,001 mugs from 76 countries. Her collection is worth over 10,000 rubles
Nadezhda from Lyuban has collected 1,001 mugs from 76 countries around the world. She even started a catalog for it, which is how she knows the exact number. Otherwise, try counting them. Space at home is quickly running out, so they are everywhere: on windowsills, on and in cupboards. And sometimes under them, writes Myfin.by.
"Relatives have learned: an avid collector is a family's sorrow"
Nadezhda is a philologist and lecturer, who has been passionate about ethnography and cultural studies for many years, primarily focusing on her small homeland — Lyubanshchina. She collects cups and mugs only with names of cities or countries. But the material can be anything. On shelves and racks, there are specimens made of ceramics, glass, wood, metal, and even birch bark and gourd-garlands.
The collection includes mugs of unusual designs: a funny cow-mug from Michigan, USA, a camel-mug from Tunisia, a dinosaur-mug from Portugal, and an elephant-mug from Sri Lanka. There's a Viking longship, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Eiffel Tower from Paris. There are even 18+ category items, but the owner hides them – their design is simply too outrageous.
"Like any experienced collector, I've long learned the phrases: 'This mug is three years old,' 'This wasn't bought now, you just haven't seen it,' 'It's always been here.' There's no other way, because relatives have learned: an avid collector is a family's sorrow."
Nadezhda's first collectible mug appeared in 2006. It was when she bought a mug in a souvenir shop near Dracula's Castle during a trip to Romania.
She settled on a mug, and chose one not typical for such a place — a cheerful yellow one.
Vampire recipe for "Transylvanian Cocktail"
The mugs in the house don't just sit prettily on shelves for admiration; they are also used for their intended purpose.
"I, my family, friends, and acquaintances drink from them. And you know, when I offer them to choose a mug they'd like to drink from, people almost always get lost. I often see a friend standing in front of the shelves, thinking. Girls almost always choose Paris, while men pick brutal Scottish Highlanders or Swedish Vikings.
The mugs, by the way, periodically leave the house walls. For example, Nadezhda brings interesting specimens from her collection to the city library for so-called "Porcelain Meetings." There, she talks about porcelain and famous Belarusian ceramic manufacturers.
"We even play games, because mugs aren't always about drinking; they're excellent entertainers. For example, Pythagoras's cup or joke mugs."
On one of my Romanian mugs, there's a vampire recipe for a "Transylvanian Cocktail." For it, you only need a certain amount of grams of blood from the first, second, and fourth groups, ice, and lemon. But blood of the third group is not included in the cocktail, and at my meetings, when I bring this mug, I always ask: why is that? Perhaps I'll leave this question to your readers too."
"I might forget what I had for breakfast, but I always remember where I got this or that mug"
Interestingly, the design of mugs from Egypt almost always uses real gold, but the "most golden" mug in Nadezhda's collection is from Qatar.
Even outwardly unremarkable specimens have an interesting history. For example, the most ordinary-looking mug from Brazil.
"In 2006, the FIFA World Cup took place in Germany, and Brazilians released a mug with the bold inscription Brasil rumo ao hexa — 'On the way to the sixth title.' But in the quarter-finals, the Brazilians were stopped by the French, dreams of the title vanished, but the mug remained."
Practically all of Nadezhda's mugs and cups are souvenir items bought for moderate prices. Most were acquired online.
"If we talk about European ones, on average they cost from 2 to 15 euros, meaning there's no talk of exorbitant prices. Collecting for me is like poetry or good music, when, first and foremost, you enjoy the process of connecting with beauty. Fortunately, my collection is neither antique nor vintage, so it's inexpensive. A collection is a mood, an emotion, always bright and positive. I intentionally don't collect beer steins, although their collection is quite widespread. I prefer tea and heartfelt conversations about beauty and the world, which alcohol is incapable of."
The average cost of one mug is 10 rubles
Antique porcelain is considered an excellent investment, but this does not apply to Nadezhda's collection. Heirs are unlikely to be able to profitably sell the collection, as it has no commercial value.
"It's quite easy to sell collections of beer steins to bars and beer restaurants, but I've never heard of a large number of mugs being needed for the design of cafes. I know one not very cheerful story about how in one of Riga's cafes, visitors are allowed to smash cups from the now-defunct Riga porcelain factory. I don't want such a fate for my collection."
Nadezhda hasn't calculated how much money she has invested in her hobby over the years. But, if you assume the average cost of one mug is ten rubles, the sum would be significant, from 10,000 BYN. However, a third of the collection consists of gifts.
"A friend from our Paralympic swimming team brought me a mug from the Paris Olympics. The collection includes gifts from actors, programmers, police officers, and even priests."
Nadezhda laughs that among her acquaintances, there's probably a saying: "Be a true friend, make your contribution to the collection."
Bought a bucket of mugs wholesale — there were about thirty pieces
Nadezhda dreams of creating a museum where she could talk about her mugs, so she is unlikely to ever sell the collection. However, she did part with one item once.
"There was a case when a person wanted to buy one of my mugs. I would hardly have sold it, but, firstly, I had two identical ones, and secondly, this person told a touching childhood story connected precisely with this mug. As a result, I sold it a little more expensively than I bought it, although I could have multiplied the sum five times. But I didn't do it, because you must always have a conscience and remember: if you cheated someone, be prepared to be cheated yourself, and not just once."
In general, such a large collection cannot be sold wholesale.
"It should be broken down into lots of at least ten items, placing one or two interesting items and the rest less attractive ones in each lot. The sale will, of course, take a lot of time, and one should not hope to recover the money spent. If a tourist bought a mug in, say, Italy and for some reason later wants to sell it here, they will hardly get back their spent 15 euros. The most expensive items in my collection are Starbucks mugs; at auctions, the price of individual mugs reaches 70 dollars and higher, but I didn't buy them that expensively. Once, for my birthday, I treated myself by buying a bucket of mugs. They sold me about thirty mugs at a wholesale price; they were all neatly packed into a plastic bucket, and it was the most interesting unpacking of my life. In that bucket, I actually found two Starbucks mugs."
Nadezhda has long dreamed of adding a mug from the small German community of Flintsbach am Inn to her collection. Why from there, she doesn't reveal the secret, but says she will definitely be the happiest person in the world if her dream comes true.
"I believe that nothing is impossible, and if I managed to acquire a coffee set from North Korea, then one from Germany will certainly work out. Although this particular mug has not yet yielded."
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