The 28th annual Hospice Society's Antique Fair and Marketplace began Saturday morning with a line up of people eager to cross the threshold to discover treasures at 9:30 with doors opening at 10 a.m.
There were 90 antique vendors and 40 crafters and home-based business owners that were divided between the two spaces within the Roll-A-Dome walls during the Prince George Hospice Society's fundraising event.
Among the hundreds of browsers were Kristy Zurowski and Jeff Bailey, longtime antique hunters who had found a few treasures as soon as they came to first-time vendor, Dawn Clark-Gray.
"We haven't missed one of these shows in the last six years," Bailey said.
Zurowski said they always find treasures at the fair.
"And when we say we're not going to, we always do," she added.
Bailey said their whole house is filled with antiques.
Their biggest treasure they found at the event was about four years ago. They purchased a Quebec-made farmhouse harvest table dating back to the early 1900s that is now showcased in their dining room.
Zurowski had an old-fashioned ice-cream scoop in her hand along with a couple of license plates.
"You're jealous aren't you that I got this scoop," Zurowski laughed. "You wish you found it first."
The license plates are Bailey's weakness, the garage is wall-papered with them and there was one in the box at the end of Clark-Gray's table that said "x-restricted" that appealed to the couple so they decided to take that home, as well - or it might make its way to the cottage. They'll decide later.
Clark-Gray has attended the event as a browser in past years and since her house has been cluttered for a while, she said she thought it was time to be a vendor. In the first half hour of the fair she had already sold $550 worth of items.
Clark-Gray said some of the items that she knows she'll find hard to part with are her ginger beer bottles. Years ago as a law student she became interested in the 1932 UK case of Honoghue vs. Stevenson where a woman at a cafe drank a ginger beer that had a dead snail in it. She got sick and sued the manufacturer for what's now known as negligence and what used to be called "duty of care."
"I could never understand how the woman couldn't see a decomposing snail in the ginger beer bottle," Clark-Gray said.
Once she saw the actual bottles Clark-Gray quickly understood how it came to be that the woman didn't see the snail - or anything else for that matter. The bottles are made of thick ceramic with narrow necks. You can't see into them at all.
"And then I thought 'now I know' and started collecting them," Clark-Gray said. She had about 15 and is now willing to part with some of them but has left her favourite five at home. Clark-Gray is hoping a certain three others don't sell so she can return them to their rightful place at her house.
The event closes at 5 p.m. Saturday and goes Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sanja Knezevic, special events coordinator for the Prince George Hospice Society, said.
Admission to the fair is by suggested donation of $5 that goes to the Hospice Society and its many programs.
"Come early for the best selection," Knezevic said. "Things go very quickly around here."
