As Boxing Day sales to see shoppers return to High Street in droves, here are the best Boxing Day bargains at Amazon, John Lewis, Selfridges, Next and many more stores up and down the UKMillions of shoppers swamped the high street in search of bargains as Selfridges recorded the most profitable hour in its 100 year history.
Crowds lined streets across Britain from 1am before excitement spilled into violence as stores opened, with fights reportedly breaking out amid stampedes in some stores.
By 10am, department store Selfridges had taken just over £2million at its tills across the UK - a two per cent increase on its previous highest takings.
Analysts said foreign shoppers and the mild weather were partly to thank for the retail boom - which is expected to reach £3.5billionDiane Wehrle, insights director at retail analysts Springboard, said sales were "surprisingly positive" amid the overall downturn of high street performance against online.
She said: "It is encouraging to see High Streets performing significantly better than Boxing Day last year. This can be put down to an array of enticing offers, the start of clearance and a great atmosphere for customers, in addition to the knock of effect of shoppers heading to their local Shopping Centre, and choosing to have a browse on the High Street too."
In London, queues numbered up to 4,000 outside some stores - up to half of them Chinese and Middle Eastern, according to reports.People queuing for the Harrods Boxing Day sale Photo: Harrods in Knightsbridge also saw one of its biggest-ever queues, which ran around the corner of the store. The department store said it was expecting more than one million customers to come through its doors during the four-week winter sale.
Ejorn Keight, 29, said the scenes at Harrods were "unbelievable", adding: “We came all the way from Frankfurt in Germany just to shop here. We came for just one day, arriving last night and leaving this eveningShoppers queue up outside Selfrdiges department store in London ahead of the annual Boxing Day sales Photo: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images
West End retail experts said 50% of shoppers are estimated to be tourists, with Chinese, Middle Eastern and US shoppers spending "four or five times the amount of a UK shopper".
Jace Tyrrell, chief executive of New West End Company, which represents 600 retailers in Bond Street, Regent Street and Oxford Street, said: "We have seen the rise of Chinese in the last couple of years, they are now our third largest shopper - international - and they will be number one in a couple of years.
"We have a lot of store staff now speaking Mandarin, also there are services for our Chinese clients - making sure they are at the hotels, talking about what the offer is and having shop staff who can speak Mandarin and take them around."Elsewhere in the capital, 380,000 shoppers were believed to have visited the Westfield Shopping Centres.
In Manchester, the earliest shoppers were seen queuing outside a Selfridges at 3am and were seen surging through the doors as shutters came up. The first buy was a Black Yves Saint Laurent clutch bag reduced to £619.
Long queues and heavy traffic also hit the designer outlet store in Bicester Village, Oxfordshire, while more than 20,000 shoppers descended upon Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. Retail giants John Lewis and Marks and Spencer are also on course for record takings online.
John Lewis said it was also enjoying a "strong start", with orders online increasing 17.7% on last year.
Mark Felix, director for online trade at John Lewis, said: "This is strong signal that consumer confidence has come back."
Analysis of foofall showed out of town shopping centres enjoyed a 9.4 per cent boost thanks to the growing popularity of so-called "click and collect" services, according to retail footfall analysts springboard.
Meanwhile, Britons' desire to shop local saw smaller shopping centres surge in footfall by 23.9 per cent.
Ms Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said sales were "surprisingly positive" as estimates showed around 22 million shoppers are believed to have visited stores yesterday.
Figures from VoucherCodes.co.uk and the Centre for Retail Research suggest 22 million shoppers spent £3.74 billion in the Boxing Day sales - a 6% increase on last year.
High streets are welcoming an estimated 22 million shoppers, some of whom started queueing at 1am, as analysts predict takings of up to £3.74 billion during the sales period The queues and scrambles begin, in pictures
In good news for the high street, the research predicts that 78% of total Boxing Day transactions will take place in bricks and mortar stores.
But online sales are set to be up 13% on last year.
Some predictions suggest overall sales could be up to 170 per cent higher than on Black Friday, which was a damp squib in the high streets, though a success online.
- Scroll down for all of the best UK deals
Despite the hype around the bargains offered in the November bonanza, shoppers were seemingly put off high streets by frenzied scenes of crowds fighting over bargains last year, with a 4 per cent drop in footfall this year.
Other forecasts suggest that the timing of Boxing Day on Saturday could result in a modest 3 per cent rise in sales compared with last year, rising to 7 per cent by Monday, as the bank holiday weekend continues.
Experts have said the number and range of products on offer in sales this year could be the greatest in three decades due to a "perfect storm" of mild weather and a public that has become accustomed to discounts.
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