Hello again; Today, I’m writing to share some especially good news. On Friday June 22nd, I closed the largest sale in the short history of my company.
I sold this beautiful Bertazzon double decker Carousel to a amusement company in Australia. The buyers have asked me to withhold their names and the selling price, and I will respect their wishes. I can tell you that this one sale almost exceeds all sales for last year, and this sale combined with the sales of the mec bumper cars, fire engine coffee kiosk, wisdom super jet coaster, and texas corn roaster put me well ahead of last year with a full six months to go. When they first contacted me, they told me they had been looking to buy one of these for a long time, and this was their first chance to get one.
This sale is also a big occasion because of how quickly it came together. On April 24th The previous owner of the carousel Jody Tornabene called me to enquire about posting his ride on my site. I explained how I operate. We discussed the potential worth of the ride and agreed on an asking price and my commission should I succeed in selling it. At that time I was thinking if because there aren’t a lot of people or businesses that can afford to add such an attraction to their business. I also knew that even if I was lucky enough to sell it, it wouldn’t happen quickly or so I thought. I asked Jody how he found me or why he decided to give me a try. He said he found me through google and was impressed by a post I had written about selling another Bertazzon carousel in the spring of 2012. Here is A link to that post I finished my conversation with Jody by asking him to send me as many photos as he had of the carousel both set up and from its storage location. He said that wouldn’t be a problem. Jody surprised me by the number and quality of the photos he sent me. 
Now, not everyone knows this, but I am almost totally blind. This means that I need to get help from my family usually my brother Patrick to put photos in the proper order and to resize them when necessary. I realized sorting all of Jody’s photos was going to take a while, so I decided to upload the first one of the bunch to my website and post it on my social media networks. Man was I surprised when I got a text message in about fifteen minutes from the buyers saying that they loved the carousel and wanted to see more of it. I should mention at this point that this was a blessing in itself because thanks to an earlier sale I had just bought a new cell phone that had speech on it and allowed me to not only know i had a text but reply to it. I didn’t have confidence in my texting skills yet, so i had Patrick text them my email address. They were nice enough to handle most of our communications through email which helped me a lot and made the delivery of photos much easier too. Patrick sorted all the photos and I uploaded them to the website and emailed them to the buyers. 
They said they were impressed by what they could see, but they wanted to see more photos of it inside the trailers where it had been stored. I communicated this to Jody, and he did not disappoint. He sent me more photos of the ride in its storage trailers than I could actually use. I sent them to my buyers on April 26th. Right away I heard back from them. I was told that they were planning a trip to the United States during the week of May 5th through the 11th. The plan was to come here on a vacation and see a few rides for sale while they were here. They told me that if they could rearrange their trip, then they would go to visit the carousel and meet its owner during that week. A few days later I got the happy news that they were going to go take a look at the carousel. 
The husband flew to New York to see the ride while the rest of his family stayed behind in California. I understand from Jody that he did a very thorough inspection of the ride. I’m told he crawled all through those semi trailers where it was stored. He went home and promised to let us know as soon as the funds had been arranged. But they promised to send a deposit when they got home to Australia regardless. . And on May 14th the deposit was received as promised. It took them a couple weeks to secure the financing. Naturally, their bank was hesitant to finance such a large purchase of an item half a world away. They finally got the approval on the condition that they come here and take possession of it first. 
So, the next hurtle was to arrange for containers to load it in to, people to do the job of transferring it from the storage trailers, and a a shipping company to deliver it to the port and eventually to Australia. This is where Jody was invaluable. He knows the owner of a company with experience in moving houses. I believe they were the ones who removed it from the Gaslight Village Amusement Park in the first place. With plans in place, the buyer returned to New York to take delivery on his gorgeous new used Bertazzon Carousel. I received word First thing Monday. So, the sale took only fifteen minutes to be agreed and only two months to be completed. This is amazing in my mind especially when you consider the amount of money involved, the distance between the buyer and seller, and the logistics involved in getting everyone together. It is very satisfying. This is what I do. I put people together and follow along during the process cheering them on and helping where I can. I hope this is the beginning of even greater blessings for me and my company. If you have any items you need to buy, sell, or trade that have anything to do with the amusement industry, then I hope you will give me a try. You can submit items by using the Submission form or by Sending an email It doesn’t cost you anything unless I sell your items. And I welcome hearing from my readers. It you have a question or just want to learn more about the amusement industry or about my story, then please drop me a line or give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks and take care, Max
