Diversified Games, a brief history of the business and it's owners.

In 1994, Brian Guenther purchased half of Pendragons Comics & Cards of Centralia, Washington. As most comic and card collectors now realize, the comic industry was on the brink of collapse. As the distributor wars raged in the comic industry and as comic shops across the country began to succumb, the decision was made in late 1995 to close the business and the owners to go their separate ways. Pendragon's last month as a brick and mortar store, was one of it's best for sales, however the underlying problems within the industry made nearly impossible for even well run shops with reasonable sales numbers to survive the impending collapse.

With his half of the business, Mr. Guenther began making plans to launch an online back issue service. By late summer of 1996, the initial website was up and by fall of 1996, it was finished. Through active and aggressive marketing, the site was a reasonable success and always profitable, even though the comics industry as a whole was hitting it's lowest point since the 1950's. PenDragon's Comics & Cards Online's emphasis on not just rare, hard to find items, but obscure and low value items made it a destination for many collectors for those oddball items that no one else seemed to have.

Not content with an online business alone and wanting to once more work with the public through a brick and morter store, the owner soon purchased a video rental store, Diversified Video. Diversified Video was located in Salkum Washington, a small town located about halfway between Seattle Washington and Portland Oregon, minutes from Interstate 5. Started in the mid 1980's, Diversified's main business had always been video and game rentals. In January of 1997 the store changed hands to Mr. Guenther, and after that, great strides were made to make Diversified live up to its name. 

In the spring of 1999, the company purchased it's own 2 story commercial building in downtown Chehalis, Washington. Over the course of late spring, and well into the summer of 1999, an extensive remodel was performed on the building, and on August 28, 1999, Diversified Video opened in it's new location. With approximately 2,800 square feet of sales floor, and a matching 2nd floor used to house offices and warehouse space, they were able to forge into new areas, expand existing one's, with the intent to do so for many years. 

Perhaps one of the most unusual video stores in Southwest Washington, Diversified Video stocked approximately 4,000 rental titles and had become one of the most comprehensive locations to purchase a wide variety of items, including Comics Book back issues, Cards, Used Paperbacks, Incense, Oils and Incense Burners, T-shirts, Jewelry plus a wide variety of other miscellaneous items. 

In early spring of 2001, the video industry was well on it's way to suffering a collapse similar to what had happened in the comics industry in the mid 90's. Once more, it was time to make a very difficult decision that would effect the brick and mortar store. Try to suffer through a recession in the video industry, or move on. The decision was made to not move on, but to move backwards if you will. In April of 2001, the video rental inventory was liquidated, new products were purchased and Diversified Games was born.

Always expanding the boundaries of their business, Mr. & Mrs. Guenther are pushing Diversified Games into becoming a full line game store without compare for southwest Washington State. Comics, both new and old, as well as board games, card games, miniatures, roleplaying games, t-shirts and much more can be found all under one roof. Also provided is ample gaming space to host their own in-store gaming events, as well as a Local Area Network(LAN) for head to head computer play of today's top PC games.

Having done mail order business on a relatively small scale now for the past five and a half years, we are now pleased to announce the creation of this web site, allowing an even greater number of people to experience the plentitude of unique items we have to offer and purchase them from afar. Our warehouse is capable of high volume sales, which means virtually no time wasted while your order is turned around and sent to you. This is not a new frontier for us, this is simply the expansion of an existing one. You, our customer, will benefit from over 10 years experience in the mail order business. We feel confident that once you have ordered from us, you will return again and again for the simplicity of use and one on one salesmanship we offer.