Many of you may already know of Ally Hogg, aka @TheRetroHunter, from Twitter. I’m proud to call him a close friend, after we first met a few years back during a Retro Asylum £20 Carboot Challenge involving Andy Godoy, Dean Swain and Paul Davies. We live about 5 miles apart now, so I was pretty excited when I heard Ally’s recent news that he was going to open up a retrogaming shop.

Since Ally created his alter ego of The RetroHunter he has been passionate about collecting anything to do with retrogaming. And boy is he prolific. Many people on Twitter call him lucky, but you make your own luck. For every charity shop that provides a retro gem he has probably trawled through 50 charity shops previously, getting absolutely nothing. For every car boot sale that gives up some good loot, Ally has been up since the crack of dawn going round all the local car boot sales, often leaving empty handed. He’ll be the first to tell you that it’s getting harder to find stuff out in the wild. More people are becoming savvy enough to put things on eBay, and often asking for inflated prices because they hear about some retro items going for a song. Once again Ally has the knack to get great finds on eBay despite this, by using all the advanced search options and a few other tricks. It just seems to be a skill he has. When we were going round the car boot sales we used to call Ally ‘Hawkeye’ because he seemed to be able to spot retro loot at the bottom of a box from 100 yards away. I think he can smell the stuff.

He has been storing up his hauls for several years now, most of it in storage, and just a few months ago he made the big decision to quit his job and open up a retro shop full time to buy and sell retrogaming goods. It seems to have been a good decision, not just because he’s able to make his passion his full time job, but he’s doing a roaring trade in the shop.

One thing that anyone who knows Ally will say, is that he is a very honest and honourable individual and seller. He won’t try to skin you at all, like a lot of sellers do. Quite the opposite. His prices are often the best around and he’ll always do you a deal if he can. His impressive reputation is based on treating the customer extremely well, and that is how his reputation has grown throughout the country at the many events and trade shows that he attends. I can’t stress enough how honest and decent Ally is as a seller. He’ll treat you right.

In the shop he has a great selection of games for Master System, Mega Drive, NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, PSP, Xbox, GameCube, Dreamcast, Saturn, Commodore 64 & Amiga. But Ally, c’mon mate, you need some more Spectrum stuff ;-p. He has a cool selection of retrogaming computer manuals and programming books too. Up on the top shelves you’ll also find some great boxed systems and peripherals, from a boxed NES to 3DO, and also some beautiful 80s toys and board games such as a boxed Big Trak, Crossbows & Catapults and Castle Grayskull. He also has, which pleases me greatly, a great selection of retro toys in the central cabinets too, including He-Man, ThunderCats, Ninja Turtles and The A-Team figures. And the first thing that hits you when you walk in are the arcade machines. He had Space Invaders from the start but just recently he has added a multi-game machine too.

Here are some pics from the shop.

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So what more reason do you need? Easily accessible from London by train (just a 15min walk from the Leigh-on-Sea station on the C2C line from London Fenchurch St) or on the main A13 road from London into Southend, it’s not hard to get to. And there’s a parking bay right outside. Get yourself down there and support a true retrogaming aficionado. If you can’t make it all then look out for him at some of the many retrogaming events that happen throughout the UK.

The RetroHunter
1172 London Road
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
SS9 2AH
Tel: 01702 472651

Shop opening times:
Mon – Closed
Tue – 10am – 5pm
Wed – 10am – 5pm
Thu – 10am – 5pm
Fri – 10am – 5pm
Sat – 12pm – 6pm
Sun – 12pm – 4pm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealRetroHunter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theretrohunter