SALES TO ASTONISH #48 - AUGUST 2026

As I started this month’s Sales To Astonish I realised it was the four year anniversary of writing this column. I still have no idea how many people read it each month but it’s cathartic to get my thoughts down on paper. 😀

I’d mentioned last month that I was excited by the opportunity to have stock in a new outlet and at the beginning of August I became a trader at Kitsch Mitch in The Yards at Kettering.  This is some kind of guerrilla take over of Northamptonshire but it’s now the third location in the county where I have stock.  Although I want to write about some of the different things that sell in Vintage Guru and Brackley Antiques Cellar in the near future, I’ll do it after a couple of months trading at Kitsch Mitch so I’ve got a reasonable idea of what sells best and where.  One nice surprise was to find that within a week of Kitsch Mitch opening I had sold a box of old 2000AD issues - Progs under 125 at £1.50 and above at 50p each.  It’s great to see these issues finding new homes

August was the second month this year that I didn’t hit my targets the first being a pretty disastrous February. One thing I’m very conscious of, and this isn’t all doom & gloom in the context of August, is that I’ve run a number of 50% sales over the last few months ,which I have to be honest, have probably masked a bigger problem  - is there actually sufficient enough demand and/or is my current stock base and offering enough to make the Unreality Store a viable ongoing business?

So August was an experiment in a way to see whether or not I could hit my targets without discounting. However I am mindful of the fact that August is a month where a lot of people are away on holiday, and certainly this year the weather has been so hot that I can’t imagine looking on a website to buy comics or RPGs whilst it’s 30+ degrees outside and in!

So I didn’t hit the August target but that’s not the end of the world. It just gives me a good indication of what the next steps for the business and it almost certainly cannot be that I continue to discount on a regular basis. I’ve been trading as The Unreality Store now for 7 years so I need to start leveraging my knowledge, expertise, enthusiasm and customer service as reasons to buy and not just make it a race to the bottom on price. That’s not to say I won’t run sales in the future but they might be targeted on certain areas of stock that haven’t moved for awhile or I’m still minded to do the Boxing Day sale which always seems to prove popular.

The end of August almost inevitably saw a decline in sales and activity as the final Bank Holiday of 2026 coincided with the final weekend in August and like most people reading this I spent at least one of the days of the weekend not doing anything work related but getting wet in a field watching bands. I had a really enjoyable time and it’s important for me to understand that as much as I would like it ,the world does not revolve around the Unreality Store. 😀

August was also a month with a tale of two collections. One that I went to look at and ending up not being able to buy and one that I didn’t look at and went and collected. The difference between the two were was completely down to my approach, 

I initially was contacted for the first one by somebody wanting to sell their collection and they very kindly provided a list and I arranged a time to go and look at the collection.  The important lesson I learned subsequently was, at the point of visiting and viewing, I did not have the money with me to be able to have bought them there and then.  And the seller was apparently in touch with a number of other potential suitors. Whether that might have tipped the balance in my favour I’ll never know but I ended up losing out on the collection because someone else was able to offer, from what I can gather, considerably more than I was prepared to part with.   

The second collection I was shown six or seven photos of some comics in boxes and a price was asked for which I agreed. I went and picked them up and gave the seller more than they were expecting. As with most collections there is some good stuff and there’s some not so good stuff but there will never homes for the comics either on the website or in the boxes at Kitsch Mitch, Brackley Antiques Cellar or Vintage Guru.  In fact I’ve also donated a large box to the local charity shop too.  I’m in the process of doing some work on what type of stock I want to buy going forward that will be able to give me the quickest return or in some cases items that are very niche but collectible 

August kind of flew by and as we hurtle towards the autumn and darker nights I am hoping the change in seasons means that people are going to get back to read comics and graphic novels and rolling dice around a table with friends. 

See you next month and thanks for your continued support!

Matthew