Hobby Comic and Game Store Closures, Second Half of 2019

We're back with another reminder that the sky is falling.

Oh, things may not be that dire when it comes right down to it.  But the industry saw a pronounced dip in Magic attendance and sales during Q4, and it would appear that was just enough pressure that some stores broke under the strain.  We've been waiting for some kind of market correction, and I can't prove that wasn't it.

For those of you tuning in for the first time, follow the link above and you'll become acquainted with these store closure lists, which I've been doing for a few years now.  What began as just curiosity and a way to commit to writing some of mine and my peers' concern about the state of the industry, has evolved into what is now, by far, the most read and shared series of recurring articles on The Backstage Pass.  So, thanks, I think?

Let's get on with the list and then I'll have some commentary.  Here are the stores that hung it up between July 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019, that I know about. As I regularly reiterate, 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.  A store that changes ownership to an entirely different business entity is typically counted as a closure, though I will sometimes omit such an instance if there was zero change in the store branding.

Announced or Discovered Closed

1. All Things Fun! (Berlin, NJ)
2. Alpha Game Shop (San Fernando, CA)
3. Beyond the Dungeon (Spring, TX)
4. Big Daddy Games (St. Augustine, FL)
5. Black Dragon Games LLC (Twin Falls, ID) appears to have survived!
6. Black Moon Games (Rutland, VT) location in Lebanon, NH remains open
7. Bull Street Comics (Temple Terrace, FL)
8. Capital City Games (Springfield, IL)
9. Card Academy (Columbus OH)
10. Cardz Plus Mor (Clovis, CA)
11. Chimera Games (Beeston, Nottingham, UK)
12. The Citadel RPG and Gaming (Galion, OH)
13. Cloud City Comics & Toys (Syracuse, NY)
14. Comic Depot (Saratoga Springs, NY)
15. Critical Strike Games (Edmonds, WA)
16. Dabbers Games (Norcross, GA) new owner, new name, new location
17. Dark Side Comics (Chelmsford, Essex, UK)
18. Dave's Valet Cards (Cedar Springs, MI)
19. Disctraders (Holland, MI)
20. Dragon's Dice (Greeley, CO)
21. The Dreaming Comics and Games (Seattle, WA)
22. Dungeons & Drafts (Ft. Collins, CO) tax seizure
23. Earth 383 (Elizabeth City, NC)
24. Emerald City Comics (Eugene, OR) open 47 years
25. Epic Comics & Collectibles (Maplewood, MN)
26. Epic Loot (Centerville, OH) consolidating from 3 locations to 2
27. Epikos Comics Cards Games (Hixson, TN)
28. Ever Green Game and Hobby (Missoula, MT)
29. The Final Dungeon (Woodstock, GA)
30. Friction Fist Games (Briar Beach, FL)
31. G2K Games (Waynesboro, VA)
32. G2K Games (Morgantown, NC)
33. G2K Games (Johnson City, TN)
34. Game Force (Longmont, CO)
35. Game Knight Café (Hamilton, OH)
36. Game Night Games (The Colony, TX)
37. Game On (Juneau, AK)
38. Game On NJ (Clifton, NJ)
39. Gamer's Cache (Mountain Home, ID) Survived and reopened this week!
40. Gamer’s Haven (Cartersville, GA)
41. Gamer's Heaven (Manhattan, KS)
42. The Gamery at Freaks and Geeks (Thunder Bay, ON, Canada)
43. Gamet1me (Winston Salem, NC)
44. Game Time Miniatures (Cincinnati, OH)
45. The Gaming Goat (Henderson, NV)
46. The Gaming Goat (Woodbury, MN)
47. Gateway Games (Mesa, AZ)
48. Heroic Knight Games (Issaquah, WA)
49. Hollow Mountain Comics and Games (East Lansing, MI)
50. Imaginary Worlds Comics (Cleveland Heights, OH)
51. The Iscevari Marketplace (Owatonna, MN)
52. The Island Games (Centreville, VA)
53. Jacksonville Game Center (Jacksonville, FL)
54. Joe Garage Games (Suwanee, GA)
55. The Junction Games (Rocklin, CA)
56. Kapow Comics & Games (Lethbridge, AB, Canada)
57. LANSlide Game Center (Clinton, MD)
58. LAN World Gaming (Maplewood, MN)
59. Last Life Games LLC (Clare, MI)
60. Legacy Games (Rosemount, MN)
61. Level Up Games (Eagan, MN) 2 closing 2 remaining
62. Level Up Games (South St Paul, MN) 2 closing 2 remaining
63. Level Up Gaming (Oceanside, CA)
64. Lindsay's Gamer Garrison (Wauconda, IL)
65. Loot Games and Comics (Coral Springs, FL)
66. Mattress Max (Ludington, MI)
67. Meeples Restaurant and Cafe (Richmond, KY)
68. Moonbase Market (St. Louis, MO)
69. Mystical Mayhem (Springfield, OR)
70. One Last Life (Claremont, NH)
71. Outflank Games (Fairfield, CA)
72. Paradox Games (Nampa, ID)
73. Pegasus Games (Madison, WI) Fast re-open under new ownership
74. Peristil Cards (Clearwater, FL)
75. Phase 1 Comics & Games (Tomball, TX)
76. Pipe Dream Toys (Winona, MN)
77. PLAYlive Nation (McCall, ID) Franchise has other locations
78. Pop Stop Collectibles (Fresno, CA)
79. Proceed Clockwise (London, England, UK)
80. Rogue's Roost (Loveland, CO)
81. Rook & Rogue Board Game Pub (Bellingham, WA)
82. Second Star Games (Prescott, AZ)
83. The Sleek Geeks (Columbus, OH)
84. Sparta Games (Omaha, NE)
85. Starlite Gaming (Summerville, NC) 2 locations both closed
86. Stomping Grounds Game Shop (Baltimore, Michigan)
87. Stuffnpodunk Games (Belleview, FL)
88. Tap Two Blue (Los Angeles, CA)
89. TCB Games (Marion, IN)
90. Titan's Vault (Calgary, AB, Canada)
91. Tom Frantzen Sports Collectibles (Roseville, MN)
92. TPK Gaming (Glen Ellyn, IL)
93. Valhalla Hobbies & Games (Stockton, CA)
94. Wonderland Games (Lake Charles, LA)

Well then. As of this article's first publication, that list was 87 stores long, and customarily people send me updates in the days and weeks to follow so you can see above where we ended up at the time you happen to be reading this article.

Here are a few I already know about for the January through June 2020 article:

• Dragon's Lair WarGames and Hobby Supplies (Shreveport, LA)
• Gamers Vault (Montgomeryville, PA)
• Wandering Havoc Games (Marysville, WA)
• Wizards Keep Games (Renton, WA)

As I've mentioned before, there are some things you need to understand before you draw conclusions from a store closing list like the ones I publish.

First, these are only the store closings that I know about.  How does that proportion to the total number out there?  We honestly don't know.  No single entity, not even the GAMA trade organization, is tracking the number of comic and hobby game stores out there.  (And it's entirely possible they couldn't do it if they wanted to, logistically speaking.)  As an industry, we don't really even agree on what is the definition of a comic and hobby game store.  You can walk into a pawnshop these days and find Magic cards and video games.  You can walk into a thrift store and find those plus comic books.  You can walk into a bookstore and buy a copy of Catan or Ticket to Ride.  For the purposes of game stores I personally observe, such as in the way-outdated Phoenix Metro Area store article on your sidebar, I include any store that is primarily engaged with one of our industry's major categories, and I exclude pure bookstores, mass market, pawns, and thrifts.  It's not a perfect method but it's the one we've got.  Wizards of the Coast reports there are 6,000 WPN stores in the world, which gives us a sort of inner bound to our range; plenty of comic shops and video game stores don't sell Magic cards.  Alliance Game Distributors and Diamond Comic Distributors likely have very comprehensive lists of stores that are out there and their guess at the total closures will be nearer the mark than mine.  But they aren't talking.

Second, some amount of churn is normal.  How much of this list is normal churn, attributable to ordinary business attrition?  Again, I'm afraid I have to answer that we honestly don't know.  The most valid analyses we can do on this information would be comparing the lists with one another and looking for correlations, trends, that sort of thing.  They were compiled essentially the same way, the flow of information on social media hasn't appreciably changed in nature or velocity since 2017, and the industry is not severely different since then.  I don't think we'll be able to take those precedent conditions for granted if I'm still riffing this thing in, like, 2024.  But by then we'll all be underwater anyway, according to climate pundits.

Third, while some of these stores absolutely deserved to fail and close, others have been veritable local institutions for years or even decades and ran well for a long time, while still others might have been shorter-lived but were making an honest go of things and were unfortunate enough to get blindsided by some bad circumstance.  I won't name names for the deserved-to-die category, but one of this article's "honorees" took five figures in customer pre-orders for Modern Horizons and then absconded with the cash, leaving their players empty-handed.  That's a fairly strong indicator of malicious intent.

The reality is that most small business owners don't have experience failing in small business, because people who do so once, generally never enterpreneur again.  They might not be able to raise any capital to do so, even if they aren't emotionally disinclined to repeat the harrowing ordeal.  This means that most store owners don't know the warning signs very well and are vulnerable to their store's cash situation getting bad more suddenly than they can withstand.  Sometimes these are things they could have recovered from if they had only known the importance of some factor or other that they were seeing, and didn't act upon, ahead of time.  Two or three new release waves of some line, underselling just enough not to cover.  Placing a large terms order ahead of a blizzard and being on the hook for it while the store sits closed.  Systematic employee embezzlement that's hidden in the one metric the owner hasn't checked in a while.  Whatever.  By the time they realize how bad their situation is, it's too late.

I rarely look at my failures in prior attempts in this industry (and others) as positive things, but they absolutely are when the chips are down.  I've made plenty of pivots lately that might seem extreme from an outside vantage point, such as taking an extended break from Warhammer last fall, because I was able to apprehend that if I didn't move that rook out of there, Entropy had checkmate against me in like eleven moves.  All kinds of things could have happened in the interim, of course.  Don't ever assume that no intermediary events will be proximate.  But you have to make decisions every day in business using the best imperfect information you have, and that includes a lot of Occam's Razor in your outcome trees, assuming the simplest and most likely results will end up true.  And if a trend line is defaulting to bust, you must pivot.  Never be on an inside straight draw to survive.

All you can do every day in business is hope your decisions prove out.  There is a long list of stores above owned by people who mostly did their level best to keep the party going, but ultimately came up short.  There's no guarantee you will do any better than they did.  You may hope to learn from observation what has worked or not worked for them or others, so that when you're watching the numbers and you have a hunch there's trouble brewing, you will recognize the necessity to act.  Until then, may your road be calm and smooth, and filled with corn somehow.