Millennium Collectables expands with massive new store in East Street

The new store will have the one of the largest collections of Dungeons and Dragons products, thousands of comic books, life-size statues and even a bar and cafe where people can sit down and play board games with their friends. Full details here.

Rob and Dylan Williams at the renovation site of what will be the new Millennium Collectables on East Street.

When Rockhampton’s Rob Williams began selling comic books from his house when he was 19, he had dreams of it being something bigger.

And now, after 30 years of ups and downs in business, that dream is becoming an incredible reality.

Massive renovations are underway at the former Esar store at 154-158 East Street to make way for the new Millennium Collectables.

The new store will be like no other comic book or pop culture store in Australia.

“This will be something that will become a tourist attraction for Rockhampton,” Mr Williams said.

At 1600 sqm, it will be one of the largest pop culture stores in the country, and will have everything from sword and pop culture displays, a trading card wall, model kits, thousands of comic books and board games galore.

“This room here is almost 200 sqm and it will be dedicated for just comics and models,” Mr Williams said.

“The outside area will have a lot of anime, more model kids, trading cards, board games, all of the DnD (Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game) products … one of the largest DnD ranges in Australia.”

There will be something like 13 life-size statues on display, gremlins hanging from the rafters and horror dolls scattered around the place.

“We are turning it into an experience like no other,” Mr Williams said.

To top it all off, there will be a DnD-themed pop culture bar and cafe named Milliwayz serving all sorts of “geeky” drinks.

“There will be something from Star Wars, something from DnD, Flash Gordon,” Mr Williams said.

“Customers can grab the board game from the cafe, take it out and play and every table will have a QR code and the waitstaff will bring your drinks directly to your table.”

All demographics have been thought of and there will be an “Andy’s Corner” (from Toy Story) for parents to hang out while their children, who are not quite old enough to be left alone, are playing games

There will also be jigsaws for customers to do and they will be displayed on the wall once finished.

“We are not doing this for the next six months, this is not a flash in the pan thing - we have been going for 30 years, this will be the next 30 years,” Mr Williams said.

Rob and Dylan Williams at the site of the new store which will have a bar and cafe, board games room, pop culture and comic book displays and more.

Millennium Collectables was officially born in 1992.

From a young age, Mr Williams had always collected comic books, going to garage sales most weekends and his collection grew to be quite large.

When he was 19, his collection had exploded and he needed some more space, so he advertised comic books for sale in the classifieds of The Morning Bulletin newspaper.

To his surprise, he made $1000 that Saturday.

“I was really happy, I had made some money,” Mr Williams said.

So he did it again the following weekend, and made the money again.

On the third weekend, he didn’t sell that many but a lot of kids came and traded some of theirs for his and he ended up with more comic books than what he started with.

Mr Williams then upgraded to a market stall and did that for a few months until one weekend it rained and one of his boxes of comic books got completely ruined.

And that was when he decided to open a shop, so he wouldn’t be subject to weather.

Millennium Collectables opened on Quay Street in a “poky little” 45 sqm shop with an old butcher’s cabinet for display shelves.

From Quay Street the store moved over to Musgrave Street and then to Northside Plaza where it was for many years.

“It became more of a passion because it actually was a lot of fun, you got to meet some very interesting characters over the years,” Mr Williams said.

The store moved from the shopping centre in 2015 to the current shop location on High Street, but at 100 sqm, it was still quite small.

“Like anyone always wants their businesses to be bigger, they always want that expansion,” Mr Williams said.

Business started to get rough and in 2018, Mr Williams seriously considered closing.

“Through really good marketing and social media, everything turned around for us,” he said.

And then the global pandemic hit.

Luckily, Millennium Collectables was one of the few businesses that was able to thrive and grow.

“A lot of people came out and started buying locally … with transport people I didn’t know how long it would take,” he said.

“We sold a lot of model kits during that time, we found a lot more people were reading.

“There’s only so many things you can watch on Netflix and stuff like that …. We just found our sales skyrocketed and because of Covid, we outgrew the current store.”

So it was time to look for a new store.

It took Rob and his son Dylan more than six months to find the perfect spot and they got the keys to the East Street store in April.

Work began almost immediately, including taking off 50 years of tiles to bring the building back to the original look of 1864 when it was built.

It was originally hoped they could open the new store in July but this has been pushed back to August now, after there have been surprises of pigeons in the ceiling and many more construction hiccups, plus a new roof.

While it is more than 35 times the space of the current store, Mr Williams said he would have no trouble filling it.

“We have a lot of stock in storage, it all comes down to display more than anything,” he said.

“Most of the time when you go into a store, they try to cram in as much as they possibly can into a very small area.

“We have 30,000/40,000 comic books, filing cabinets full of back issues … Over 200 framed autographs … They have been sitting in boxes.

“It’s not about cramming hundreds of items … take those hundreds of items and spread them over five metres rather than cramming them into a small area.”

The new store is planned to open on Sunday, August 28, to coincide with the popular CapriCon event the day before.