Starbucks Card Collecting

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A Starbucks card is uniquely defined by the picture on the front (or alternatively by what ever name that picture is given) along with a number of other distinguising features. It happens that the same picture has been used to many 'different' cards: The same picture can have been used on cards from different countries.

Determining the country of your card

This is fairly easy to determine either by looking at the web address or the phone numbers on the back of the card. Here are some examples:

This is a card from Taiwan, which you can tell from the web address 'www.starbucks.com.tw'	This card is an American (USA) card. It is most easily identified by the 1-800-STARBUC phone number, the 'Printed in the US', and the absense of any French writing. Canadian Starbucks cards are also printed in the US and show the same 1-800 number, but they have text in French as well.
This is an example of a British card. This is most easily determined by noting the 'www.starbucks.co.uk' web address and the '0845' phone number.	This is an example of a Canadian card. Note, the phone number is the same as on the US cards, but there is French writing.

In recent years, cards are now being marked with two letter country identifiers as can be seen on this Malaysian card:

Determining the prefix and range of your card

Cards with the same picture may be re-issued a number of times; either during different years, or in multiple batches. Different batches will have different card prefixes (at least on the European and North American cards). The prefix can be seen in the red box in this picture:

The range is the second block of 4 (at least on this card). Please see the page on Prefixes and Ranges from the notes page on exactly where to find the prefix on cards from different countries.

Determining the year of your card

Just like with batch (prefix) numbers, the same card can be re-printed with a different year. The year can be found at the bottom of the card:

Determining the SKU and Card Identifier of your card

Most cards have an SKU number - look at the Japanese cards above - at the very bottom you see SKU 11099080. It does happen that the same design is re-issued with a different SKU. The other number is the the card identifier. On most newer cards this is found immediately after the SKU and starts with SBX. Earlier they started with NSP and even earlier with CAR and other three letter identifiers.

Determining the pin-code covering type of your card

The last factor that is used to distinguish cards from each other is the covering of the pin number - the part that you scratch off to reveal the pin:

Many different types have been observed, and they appear after each cards title in between ( ); for example (RH). These types are:

Abbreviation	Description	Example

EXP	Exposed
HLS	Metalic Spirals
NP	No Pin
RHG	Repetitive Hash Gold
RHS	Repetitive Hash Silver
RLS	Random Large Swirl
RLSA	Random Large Swirl Applique
RSS	Random Swirl Silver
RSSA	Random Swirls Silver Applique
RWG	Repetitive Wave Gold
RWGA	Repetitive Wave Gold Applique
RWS	Repetitive Wave Silver
RWSA	Repetitive Wave Silver Applique
SB	Solid Black
SBA	Solid Black Applique
SG	Solid Gold
SGA	Solid Gold Applique
SS	Solid Silver
SSA	Solid Silver Applique
ST	Sticker
UNK	Unknown

The pin covers that end in `A' are 'Applique' versions. Applique means that the pin cover is covered by an additional plastic like translucent material. So a Starbucks card is uniquely defined by: its title (front picture), year, country, prefix, card identifier/number and the pin cover type.

Many collectors might not care about different years, card identifiers, prefixes and pin-cover types, but simply care about the picture and the country, but for those that do, this site allows you to distinguish your cards on all the mentioned attributes.

I would like to acknowledge the now defunct page "Chris' Starbucks Card Collection" which was at 'http://starbucks.ketzra.com/' for some of the information about the older cards as well as the original pin-cover classification scheme.

Click here for the legal stuff.

Questions, suggestions, edits or to submit information about a missing card, please email collectstarbucks@gmail.com