Auckland's last Civic Video in Glenfield will soon sell all its stock.

New Zealand's largest DVD rental store is to close and sell off its collection of around 60,000 movies and games.

Nick Thomas has owned Civic Glenfield in Auckland for 21 years, but has decided to bring the curtains down on the business with DVD rentals on a steep decline, and online gaming killing the games rental side of the business.

"We have no regrets. We have really enjoyed ourselves in the industry. We always knew nothing is forever," Thomas said.

It's been a season of little cheer in the DVD rental industry for the city, with artsy-movie rental business Videon on Dominion Road closing on December 31.

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On Monday, Thomas will begin selling off Civic Glenfield's enormous movie and games collection to members of the public looking to add titles to their personal collections.

The rise in online movie streaming has had a huge impact on the DVD rental business, Thomas said.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Nick Thomas has owned Civic Video in Glenfield for 21 years. He's closing the store and selling the 60,000 movies and games it owns.

"Over the years our membership has got older," Thomas said. "55-plus is our biggest membership segment. There's a lot of customers in their 70s and 80s."

For many older customers, a trip to the DVD store has provided the reason for a trip out.

But it was now just not profitable enough to continue.

"I feel devastated for those people because they haven't embraced digital technology, and they don't know what to do. It's quite sad."

This holiday season saw a new low in visits from the youngest movie-watchers, which Thomas believes is another symptom of the rise of movie streaming.

"This is probably the first school holidays in which we haven't had many kids come in with their parents," he said.

But there have been some behind-the-scenes movie business changes that have made it doubly hard for DVD rental businesses to stay in business, Thomas said.

Movie distribution companies have closed their New Zealand arms, and are operating out of Australia.

That could lead to a two-week delay in new releases making it into Thomas' store, and in recent years the movie distributors haven't even been sending posters for window and in-store advertising.

"We have had to buy them from Event Cinemas," he said.

The dwindling market has also meant the distributors aren't willing to pay the fees to have all but the highest profile movies to be rated in New Zealand.

That had meant a falling off of new festival and non-mainstream movies being rated in New Zealand.

It had meant DVD stores were losing an important part of the choice they offered customers.

Auckland's Videon DVD rental store on Dominion Road closed on December 31.

"Not everybody wants to watch the big blockbusters. We have a big core of members who like professionally made alternative movies," Thomas said.

It was ironic that Kiwis could watch many of the movies without New Zealand ratings by streaming them online.

If it wasn't for The Warehouse and JB HiFi, which both sell movies, even fewer movies would get rated for the New Zealand market, Thomas believed.

"The DVD format will eventually disappear," Thomas said, though exactly when, he could not say.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Younger customers are few and far between these days for DVD rental stores. A boy checks out his options at Civic Video in Glenfield.

DVD sales and rentals only overtook video sales and rentals in 2003, and until the advent of streaming helped create a booming golden age of movie-making.

At one point Civic Glenfield was so popular, Thomas needed a roster of 22 staff to run the shop.

By 2009, there were more than 650 DVD retail stores in New Zealand.

Many commanded prime retail space, though that had an unnerving result for Civic Glenfield, when in 2015 an elderly driver crashed through his front window and demolished the children's section.

Fortunately, there were no children inside at the time.

STUFF In September 2015, Civic Glenfield made national headlines when a driver crashed through its front window.

Now, Thomas reckons there were fewer than 30, and that his was the last of the big ones, with only smaller stores remaining.

Thomas may be pulling the plug on the DVD rental business, but he will continue to operate a business from the premises, which is passed by around 35,000 cars a day, however, and retains the Lotto and Hop card top-ups franchises he runs out of the store.

He's not saying yet what his new business will specialise in. Before it opens there's the small matter of selling 60,000 movies and games.