Hobby Comic and Game Store Closures, Second Half of 2018

It is still a bloodbath out there, just as it was for late 2017 and early 2018.

Here are the stores that hung it up between July 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018, that I know about. My information sources are imperfect but I am confident that this list does not fundamentally mischaracterize the situation. I required a firsthand-source announcement or evidence of the discovery of the store closed in order to add it to the list.

Announced or Discovered Closed: 

1. Alamo City Comics (San Antonio, TX) 
2. Alpha Games (Chilliwack, BC, Canada) 
3. Alter Ego Comics and Collectibles (Bellevue, WA) 
4. Apex Hobby Shop (La Crosse, WI) other location in Sparta, WI closing early 2019
5. Babbitt's Books & Games (Normal, IL) 
6. Battlequest (Carfax, Horsham, UK) 
7. BattleZone Comics & Games (Las Vegas, NV) 
8. Big Kidz Games (Grand Rapids, MI) 
9. Black Dog Hobby and Game (Loves Park, IL) 
10. Black Rooster Gaming (Champaign, IL) 
11. Buy-Back Games (Wheat Ridge, CO) 
12. Byte Club Gaming (Pentwater, MI) 
13. Capital City's Game Emporium (Jefferson City, MO)
14. Cheese Boy Comics (Las Vegas, NV) 
15. Coffee & Dice (Bournemouth, UK) 
16. Comic Emporium (Panama City, FL) 
17. Comics FTW (Santa Rosa, CA) 
18. Costales' Dungeons & Flagons (Fresno, CA) 
19. Crazy Timmy Games (Kirkland, WA) 
20. Crossroads Games & Comics (Victoria, VA) 
21. Ctrl-Alt-Delete Gaming (Sheffield, OH) 
22. Double Dragon Gaming (Waterloo, IA) 
23. Draxtar Games (Batavia, IL) 
24. Eccentric Emporium Video Games and Collectibles (Kissimmee, FL) 
25. Evolution Games (Wilkes-Barre, PA), may be reopening 
26. Forge 26 (Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK) 
27. Funtastic Games (Louisville, CO) 
28. The Game Cave (Hendersonville, TN) 
29. Gameporium (Seattle, WA) 
30. Gamers (4 locations in Omana, NE and nearby) 
31. Gamerz Planet (Grand Junction, CO) 
32. GameSpace (St. Mary's, ON, Canada) 
33. Game Time Miniatures (Milford, OH) 
34. Gathering Games (Tampa, FL) 
35. Get Your Game On (Ann Arbor, MI) 
36. Good Games Montana (Butte, MT) 
37. Goose's Gaming (Milan, TN) location in McKenzie, TN remains open
38. Hazely's Realm LLC (Grandview, WA) 
39. Hobby Town (Auburn, AL) 
40. Hobby Town (Lake Geneva, WI) - birthplace of D&D 
41. Imperium Games (Wixom, MI)
42. Iscevari Marketplace (Owatonna, MN) 
43. Kitsilano Comicshop (Vancouver, BC, Canada) 
44. KnK Gaming (Myrtle Beach, SC) 
45. Lauderdale Comics (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
46. Legacy Defined Games (Killeen, TX) 
47. Let's Play Games and Comics (Waverly, NY) 
48. Mac's Comics & Collectibles Inc (Miami, FL)
49. Mile High Comics (Glendale, CO) Warehouse location remains open 
50. Monster Comic Books (Tempe, AZ) Later reopened under new ownership
51. Movie House (McCook, NE) 
52. Myriad Games (Londonderry, NH) 
53. My Secret Identity Comics and Games (Sydney, NS, Canada) 
54. The Nerd Store (Mt Morris, NY) 
55. Nexgen Next Level Gaming (Horn Lake, MS) 
56. Outlaw Gamers (Golden Valley, AZ) 
57. Packard's/McGuire Books (Oak Ridge, TN) 
58. Phantasy Hobbies (Shakopee, MN) 
59. PT Collectibles (Edison, NJ) 
60. Respawn Gaming (Beaumont, TX) 
61. RetroFix (Great Falls, MT) - Missoula location remains open 
62. Revolution Games (Calgary, AB, Canada) 
63. Rewind Collectables & Games (Ashton-under-Lyme, Lancashire, UK) 
64. Shadow Games LTD (Rugby, Warwickshire, UK) 
65. Silver Gym Games (Arlington, TX)
66. Silver Wolf Comics and Games (Morgan City, LA)
67. Sockmonkey Junction (Mansfield, TX) 
68. Southern Fried Comics (Hattiesburg, MS) 
69. Stage 2 Games (Cabot, AR) 
70. Sword & Board (Exeter, UK) 
71. TCG Junkie (Las Vegas, NV) 
72. Toyriffic (Hudson, WI) 
73. Valkyrie Cards and Games (Vancouver, WA)
74. Video Game Galaxy (Orange City, FL) other location remains open 
75. Vigilante Games (Warner Robins, GA) 
76. Villains Unlimited Comics and Games (Miami, FL)
77. White Cap Comics and Games (Grand Rapids, MI) 
78. Xaos Games (Gateshead, UK) 

After posting these articles I typically receive a flurry of additional store closure info, so I figure I should also publish the ones we know about that didn't close just yet but already announced that they're done, so well-meaning folks know they don't have to send those in.  Here:

Stores announced closing the 1st half of 2019:

1. Apex Hobby Shop (Sparta, WI) Other location closed late 2018
2. BC Comix (Howell, MI) One huge location built from 3 smaller locations, all closed 
3. Endgame (Oakland, CA) 
4. GameXcape (Asheville, NC) 
5. Playthings (Madison, WI) 
6. R.U. Game? (Brandon, FL) 2 other Tampa area locations remain open 
7. Sixth Chamber Used Books (St Paul, MN) 
8. We Know Video Games (Albuquerque, NM) 3 locations all closing 
9. Wizard's Tower (Stuart, FL) complete with raucous Vegas bender

So, the list grows again.  Fifty stores, then 59, now 69 (dude!) when this post first went up and increasing as I add more from edits, and you have to extrapolate that I probably know about maybe 10% of the real closures, most are anonymous holes-in-the-wall in Nowheresville, West Carolina, so the real number is probably 700+.

How many will close in the first half of 2019? With the main revenue line for most comic and hobby game stores in a state of extreme market upheaval despite generally excellent content -- Magic: the Gathering, of course -- there are a fair number of stores that simply have nothing else to turn to.  The flip side of that, as I have alluded in recent posts, is that a store that focused on nothing but Magic for at least the past four years or so is probably in a pretty stable position, and can at least ride a toboggan safely to their lease terminus.

(Photo posted on Alter Ego Comics public feed.)

Something I want to emphasize again is that a store closure should not be assumed reflective of ignorance, incompetence, or laziness on the part of the owner(s).  Though that does happen probably more often than it ought.  The reality is, the deck is stacked against small businesses in America (and even in Canada and the UK, as you can see in the list).  Virtually every imposed cost hits with no economy of scale to absorb or mitigate it.  Virtually every loss ends up at the feet of the ownership, who get paid last.  Virtually every entitlement takes away the next dollar and there's no way to be sure where the dollar after that will come from.  I mean we kind of know, but until you have it, you never really know.  Every day I wonder if that's the day that the general public will make an irrevocable turn away from every niche product line I happen to carry.  Sales don't have to go to zero overnight to kill off a lot of businesses.  In fact, in a heated bubble market, a simple slowdown of the growth rate might be enough.

I've spent the last six years pouring my every effort into making Desert Sky Games the best it can be, and I've seen peers working every bit as hard who caught a few worse breaks and they don't have stores anymore.  I've seen people who stuck it out and survived long-ago downturns weathering the current turbulence with aplomb and a healthy reserve; I've seen people whose stores did fine during the last famine run out of gas this time and have no back-pocket solution to call upon.  I've seen people with no business running stores have Brewster's Millions scenarios allowing them to piss away untold fortunes paying area grinders to love them temporarily.  I've seen people with no business running stores get roped into "investments" by fast-talking turn-key hucksters, both on the tabletop side and the video game side of the swimming pool.

And I've seen two new stores arise for each one that closes, which is why these lists will never really end.

DSG is still for sale and always will be until I've handed over the keys, but nobody who can afford it wants it, and nobody who wants it can afford it.  Guess I'll get up in the morning tomorrow and spend another day trying to raise my game.