Email to a friend Printer friendly Font: * * * * Bargain hunters were crowded around the Wizard’s Comics booth, buying 10 titles for a dollar. Craig Boyle left with several additions to his collection of 1,000 comics. His comic-buying advice: “Be sure your significant other is OK with it.” Vortex, a dealer in celebrity photos and posters, arrived from St. Albert, wearing a purple-and-gold college marching-band tunic. “A friend gave it to me,” he said.

“I had to promise never to get rid of it.” Vortex displayed a poster of the Rolling Stones during their 1994 Voodoo Lounge tour, photographed in Commonwealth Stadium. “I shot it myself,” he said. “Snuck in the camera.” Dennis Benzer spent “probably $300,” on a stack of 78-rpm records. He paid $20 for an Elvis Presley Blue Suede Shoes, but said his real find, for $25, was Presley’s more obscure Mean Woman Blues, a rarity which RCA Victor released only in Canada.

Benzer’s record-buying tip: “Go to garage sales. They’re cheaper.” Collectible trends can be driven by wider events, said show producer Jennifer Russell. “The Transformers movie came out this summer, so Transformer memorabilia will sell.” The music industry is producing more 33-rpm vinyl records, so early vinyl is making a comeback, she said. “Stuff from the ’80s, heavy metal and punk,” is most popular, said dealer Bob Moffitt.

He hoped to sell, for $15, Christmas Eve with Colonel Sanders, Kentucky Fried Chicken Special Collector’s Edition, with tracks by Floyd Cramer, Jim Reeves and the Norman Luboff Choir. Yesterday’s favourite gifts can be today’s collectibles. Paige Marcinkoski, whose family owns Anime Hypercubed shops in Camrose and Grande Prairie, had one boxed Cabbage Patch Twins set, from 1985, priced at $89.95. Cabbage Patch dolls from the 1970s, before they had plastic heads, sell for more than $100, she said.