This post details what we bought at the con, and the majority of these items came from artist’s alley. It was a bit of an effort to fit all this into our suitcases for the trip home 🙂
I bought a few dozen postcards, some of which are shown above. These are rarely sold as ‘postcards’ and usually called ‘mini prints’. Frustratingly a lot of creators print them on flimsy card or with glossy backs, both of which I avoid. But I had no trouble finding many great ones anyway!
Kristin purchased these stuffed animals. The top left is a ‘sea bunny’ and the bottom left a jellyfish. The guinea pig has a magnet in his mouth so he can ‘eat’ the strawberry!
A couple of magnets.
A pencil case. This is very high quality, and the seller had several different designs that were all great.
I was very surprised to see rubber stamps, and astonished to see the set on the left which uses three stamps to make a coloured impression. I used it on a few postcards and it’s a bit tricky to get it looking perfect, but I’ll get better with practice!
We bought more stickers than anything else, and this is only a selection of them. From what I’ve learned on YouTube videos, stickers are the best-sellers at most booths, and the selection is usually massive.
These are metal pins, and the three at the top are blind-boxed (and not yet opened). Pins also sell very well for the artists, and as with stickers there is an enormous variety. Some can get very big, and equally expensive!
Another surprise this year were the indie trading cards. I bought four different packs, and they all have a few cards inside drawn from a set of several dozen. The cards are very fancy with foil and etching, but I’ll let these packs ‘age’ a while before opening. I saw 8 different sets of trading card packs for sale, and the ones I skipped were indie TCGs inspired by Pokemon.
The orange card in the middle is a Magic The Gathering proxy token using a character from an anime series (DanDaDan). Several artists sold MtG proxies, which is something I don’t recall seeing last year.
This was purchased from the same guy who hand carved the rubber stamps (that I mentioned in the previous entry). As a secondary hobby he hand-makes paper cut-out art of anime characters. All the black parts in the photo were carefully cut away using an exacto knife, and since this is a fairly small piece of paper (about 6 inches on the long side) the detail here is astounding. I’ll put a vibrant colour behind and frame this one!
Kristin purchased six prints, all of which we’ll also frame and display. The first was this cat.
This watercolour (print) shows cute cats in the clouds. Almost every print sold by this artist was exceptional, and choosing just one was difficult.
And lastly we have this set of four seasonal prints showing a cat in a windowsill. These are about two feet tall and it will be a challenge framing them and finding somewhere to display them!
This isn’t everything we got. I bought a lot of manga, an anime figure, four t-shirts and a few future gifts I obviously won’t spoil here. Our wallets got a workout, and it was only the available space in our suitcases that prevented us from buying more!