the wacoms are wonderful toys and i'm saving my pennies
but in the meantime..........take a transparency sheet (like you use for overhead projectors) and put it over the photo and with an india ink pen - or an ultrafine sharpie if all else fails! - trace the details you want to keep and ignore those you don't. YES it takes a lot of practice, but you'll get better! scan in your results at a good dpi (300 minimum) oh! put a piece of clean white paper behind it so you don't get 'scan trash' from the cover! you can scan it straight into corel draw and then the real fun begins
play with the various trace functions and see if you come up with something cleanable- frankly i usually just switch to wireframe view and draw my vector image right on top of the scan - takes a lot less time and cleaning as a rule!
sorry to say, there isn't a magic button (yet!) to take the scut work out of our business!