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Like many fans of the young Elvis, Fred Whobrey collected 45-rpm records, got a record player with Elvis’s signature on the case for his birthday and bought an Elvis toy guitar from Sears.

Those 1950s memorabilia are the most valuable and collectible today.

“Every time Elvis had a concert, Col. Parker would create some merchandise to sell,” said Whobrey, sales manager of the Decatur (Ill.) Herald Review.

They were mostly inexpensive souvenirs such as ankle bracelets with Elvis’s army dog tags, wallets and purses, charm bracelets, hats, autograph books and school binders.

Whobrey, a lifelong fan, is in Memphis this week to pay tribute to the King, renew friendships with fellow fans and organize the Elvis Fan Club Festival at the Super 8 Inn near Graceland. At the festival, fan clubs can set up trading tables to sell and trade memorabilia.

Whobrey typically comes to Memphis three times a year.

“I buy and sell things to support my collecting habit,” he said. “It’s a good habit and a natural high.”

Unlike most young people enamored of the King, Whobrey kept the items in good condition and still has most of them today.

He doesn’t have a shrine to Elvis in his house, but he does have a ’50s rooms with all kinds of stuff from rock and roll’s first decade.

The fan club festival is just one of the venues where Elvis collectibles will be traded and sold. There are also several auctions scheduled this week.

One auction will feature the collection of Margie Woods, an Elvis fan who bequeathed her collection to Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center and the Elvis Presley Trauma Unit at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. It will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday at B. B. King’s Blues Club at Beale and Second.

“We have an auction every year, but this will be a big one,” said Danielle Letcher, coordinator of development for the Med Foundation, the charitable fund-raising arm of The Med.

Woods, who lived in Cedartown, Ga., supported the trauma unit and Le Bonheur over the years. She died in 1994 in Memphis during Elvis week.

She left her entire collection, except for one piece, to the institutions.

“She always said she wanted to be buried with Elvis,” said Beverly Power, another Georgian who was a friend of Woods’s. “So she had a cut-out figure of Elvis buried in her grave. It had always stood in her living room.”

Last Friday, auctioneer Phyllis Presley Collas and Steve Templeton, author of three books on Elvis memorabilia, searched through cartons, boxes and stacks of Woods’s collection in preparation for the auction.

“There’s a lot of love in this collection,” said Collas, a fan who moved to Memphis from New Jersey 12 years ago to be close to Graceland. An employee of John Roebuck & Associates, an auction company, she has done The Med’s auctions for several years.

“There are treasures here that we’ve never had at our auctions,” Collas said.

She predicted that a large papier mache RCA “Nipper” dog will bring $400 to $500. The 1950s record player should bring $600 to $1,200.

But you never know what will send the fans into a bidding frenzy. Whobrey said he once sold a new Elvis telephone that retails for about $80 for $350 at auction.

Templeton, author of Elvis: An Illustrated Guide to New and Vintage Collectibles, said the new items in Woods’s collection are generally of high quality. Many are limited edition items such as the large assortment of commemorative plates.

Two new denim jackets covered with Elvis fan club pins from all over the world will also be auctioned.

Because so many of the 1950s items are being reproduced, collectors need to beware of new merchandise with “old” prices.

“I’ll ususally take a new item like a charm bracelet and display it next to the old one so people can see the difference,” Whobrey said.

Cyndi Sylvia, president of the Elvis Memphis Style Fan Club, is glad she hung on to early Elvis memorabilia. She’s been a fan from the first day she heard him sing.

“He was different and we were ready for that,” said Sylvia, 52. “We were tired of big bands.”

Her collection includes original bubblegum cards, old magazines with articles and pictures of Elvis, newspaper clippings, eight-track tapes, liquor decanters, reproductions of gold records and an old dog tag ankle bracelet.

“Today I’m interested in limited edition items, not basic knickknacks,” Sylvia said. She only buys; she never sells.

Sylvia says her dolls are her pride. She has four Elvis dolls from the defunct World Doll Co. One she is especially fond of is 33 inches tall and wears black leather.

When he comes to Memphis, Whobrey is ever aware of one undeniable fact:

“Let’s face it. The main reason we’re here is gone. But even in death Elvis is doing the same he did in life, bringing people together.”