Vijay Dayal sells seashells by the seashore—lots of them, in fact. For more than 20 years, the Horseshoe Bay merchant has made a pretty good living peddling what amounts to beach debris to the tourists who wander into his small souvenir shop, Dayal’s Variety Store (6655 Royal Avenue, West Vancouver), from the nearby B.C. Ferries terminal.

It doesn’t seem to matter that his glossy shellware originates in faraway oceans where the water is perennially warm and blue. Dayal says that even when he tells people the perfect shells aren’t from local beaches, they are content to slap down $6.50 for a large urchin casing or $11.95 for a scallop-shell night-light: “I think it is because we are on the ocean here, and it reminds them of being at the edge of the ocean, and so they buy it to remember that feeling.”

A Sunday-afternoon stroll through Vancouver’s busiest souvenir shops suggests that visitors to our fair city don’t mind a hearty serving of cheese along with their chachkas. How else to explain the glut of moose, mountains, Mounties, and maple-flavoured everything (including—eww—tea) packed into storefront windows along tourist-laden Robson and Water streets? Or the brisk trade in miniature totem poles and other faux-Native bric-a-brac that, according to Dayal and other vendors, is the financial backbone of every successful souvenir stall?

Over at Fortune Star Gift & Souvenir (1085 Robson Street), store clerk Sheila Woo says the 25-cent postcards (most popular: the Maple Leaf flag) displayed outside the store entrance are a loss leader: “If we can get people into the store, they will spend at least $10, but more like $50. A few T-shirts, some key chains, and a couple of bottle openers—it adds up quickly.”

It adds up even faster when 2010 Olympics paraphernalia is added to the mix. Woo says 2010 souvenirs account for as much as half of her sales these days, but that the price is too high for many tourists. “The [Olympics] T-shirts are expensive at $24. But we sell a lot of the little pins.”

Ontario visitors Mike and Pam Taylor, en route to Alaska via cruise ship, settled on the 2010 collector pins ($8) as souvenirs for their grandchildren, even though Pam had wanted to buy the plush Olympic mascots. “At $30 each, that’s just too much,” says Pam. “When you come right down to it, it’s just another stuffed animal that’s going to wind up in a garage sale.”

To the cynical eye, it might appear that just about everything in the high-traffic souvenir shops is destined for a garage sale—I mean, how long would you want a clear-plastic pyramid embedded with a Canadian penny taking up space on your bookshelf? True, there are some who will cherish forever the hand-hewn wooden plaques featuring steam trains and orcas manufactured by B.C.–owned Intarsia Wood Art ($99 at Grand Maple Gifts, 1046 Robson Street). But too often, mementos can look like mistakes when they’re unpacked at the end of a trip.

For a better class of keepsake, point visitors toward the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Gallery Store for pretty, inexpensive, and useful trinkets such as pens and magnets featuring Emily Carr or Group of Seven paintings, or suitable-for-framing watercolour art cards of local landscapes ($7.99) by Burnaby artist Corinne Aelbers. Circle Craft on Granville Island is good for locally made arts and crafts.