Wizzard Cards & Gifts

Gifts are weird things. Never before in the history of commercialism has a whole industry opened up to sell items whose purpose is so vague and yet, paradoxically, mind-​twistingly specific. Wizzard at the Albert Dock is a perfect example of this kind of tatmongers. The usual selection of T-​shirts, postcards, posters and key-​rings are all contained here, amid a baffling selection of junk that will weigh down your hand luggage and cause relatives to hide their frowns when you hand it over.
The staff here got on my nerves. Two lads who looked like they were already regretting their choice of work experience, they remained on their phones as I stood there, got annoyed at me when my card didn’t work and then threw my purchased item back at me once the transaction was complete. Maybe serving tourists all day does that to a person but I’m a local. We should be bezzy mates, lad. There’s a secret handshake and everything.

Wizard Card shop locates itself adjacent to Albert Dock’s Tate Gallery but it is no ordinary card shop.
In addition to all the typical cards you would expect, they do sell a whole plethora of what appears to be useless junk in my eyes!
There are actually some nice cheap gifts such as Beatles merchandise (unofficial) and many arty pictures on sale which may be your ideal souvenir. On the other hand, they have more stranger gifts like growable fake flowers and grow your own boyfriend mini figures that apparently get bigger within 6 weeks when you immerse them in water! There are more naughtier ones too — better left to the imagination. So eccentric and tacky!

This is one of the many little gift shops on the Albert Dock.
If you want typical, cheap souvenirs of Liverpool (you know, for your keychain and mug collections), this is a really great shop. They have more Liverpool crap than you can imagine including T-​shirts, mugs, keychains, art prints, plush toys, knickknacks, and more.
They even seem to carry a surprisingly large amount of stock that could be in a gift shop in Wales, and even some lonely New York items. Very odd. There’s also plenty of general gifty items as well like toys, novelty gifts, and home décor items.
But, for the most part, this is cheap stuff. Like I said, if you are looking for cheap stuff, that’s fine. But if you want a really nice gift, give this particular shop a miss and move on to some of the other ones.

It is amazing how much stuff is in this shop. The usual cards, postcards, balloons, wrapping paper which you might expect in a card shop.
But what forms a much greater part of the shop are a range of gifts, including tshirts, teatowels, mugs, books, wooden wind chimes (a huge selection of these), mirrors and I could go on and on. Besides some of the beatles memorabilia I think the docks could do without this type of cheap tack however it appears to be what people want.