They've lined the walls of Toronto's Honest Ed’s for years, adding pizazz to a store known for its hand-painted, pun-heavy signs. But this weekend, some of that pizazz will be gone.
On Saturday, the discount emporium will be selling nearly 3,000 posters from theatre shows that were put on by Mirvish Productions over the years. Prices for posters will range from $2 to $100. The sale is part of the store's scheduled closing at the end of 2016.
Overseeing this weekend's poster sale is Honest Ed's general manager, Russell Lazar, who has been to hundreds of Mirvish Productions shows.
"It was just elegant -- it was a different world," said Lazar while holding a crushed velvet program from the re-opening of Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre in 1963.
One of the posters up for grabs Saturday is for "The Cowboy and the Lady."
"It was the very first show that played at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in 1907," Lazar said.
Also for sale will be a poster for "Miss Saigon," the first show that was staged at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
"They really built that theatre to house 'Miss Saigon,'" Lazar said.
The posters that will be available for purchase on Saturday are just a small portion of the Mirvish theatre collection.
Hundreds of other posters, paintings and photographs that have dotted the walls of the fabled Bloor-and-Bathurst bargain store are not yet for sale, while others have been donated to the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa.
Honest Ed's was sold in 2013 to a Vancouver-based developer. It will close for good on Dec. 31, 2016.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Scott Lightfoot
