Andy Garth: Online it is then
For five years I have been running my shop in Western Road in Hove and many of you have visited and purchased all sorts of stuff, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. But over the past few hot months it seems the internet and buying online has taken over as the better way.
So with a kind of inevitability, I have decided to close the shop at the end of the month and concentrate on selling (and buying) online.
At first I felt rubbish and deflated, but if House of Fraser, Toys r Us and other massive retailers are having to close then I don’t feel too bad.
My interest hasn’t waned and my passion for all things Brighton and Hove will never go away so please keep contacting me at Brightonandhovestuff@gmail.com
My passion for all things Brighton and Hove will never go away
I will still be holding bi-monthly auctions with Robert from Step Back In Time, and the next one on Tuesday 25 September is already full, with the catalogues available around Friday 7 September.
The shop has been great fun and I will move on with my website Brightonandhovestuff.co.uk
All sorts of things are available with new things being added on a regular basis.
I will still write my column and please let me know if there is any request for information.
Next column I should have a good selection from the latest auction to tempt you with.
Contact me at Brightonandhovestuff@gmail.com
Been there done that as the comment goes Andy, my Wife and I also ran a collectors shop for ten years, and although the buying in was fantastic, from old Dinky toys to car boots full of books, the sales themselves were just far too erratic to make it pay for my Wife to hold it down as a job while I continued my work on local property. So like you we closed ours in the year 2000, and had already gone online by then, and still trading some thirty years since moving up a gear since attending boots faiors in the late eighties. These days our sales are mainly books and photographs from a negative library of historic transport and a lot of Brighton too, our early material is views of Brighton Trams. Even eighteen years later, folk still ask us if we still have our shop, yet they obviously do not support collectors shops and we all miss them when they have gone. In the early nineties there were over 30 similar independant shops in Brighton, road & rail modelling, books, toys, and such like where so much now is found online.
We wish you well in your future sales.
Gordon & Carolyn Dinnage
T/A Dinnages Publishing