Prevent unique items being bought by more than one person

I have a store which only sells one off, unique items. I already have the cart setup so there is only 1 product in stock of each item and once a purchase is completed it does remove that item from the store as it shoud.

My concern is if two customers are shopping at the same time what will happen if they both add the same item to their cart, the store hasn't yet updated that that product is sold and so potentially both people could try and buy the same item. Is there a way of preventing this by maybe hiding items as soon as they are added to the cart or some other solution?

You'd need to look at this carefully as if someone who is logged in adds the item to their basket and then logs off that item would then be "lost".

Brent:

You'd need to look at this carefully as if someone who is logged in adds the item to their basket and then logs off that item would then be "lost".

well if I can find a way of doing this my next step would be to prevent customers from storing their carts, there really is no need on my store for that option to be available