Where did you put the my $dbh = shift in the sub store_items or the main body of the code??

it needs to be in the sub

sub store_items {
   my $dbh = shift;
   ....
[download]

If this is the case then follow my previous suggestion and use Data::Dumper to print out the database handle right before your error and see what you get.

sub store_items {
   my $dbh = shift;
   use Data::Dumper;
   print Dumper $dbh;
   ...
[download]

grep

Mynd you, mønk bites Kan be pretti nasti...