If you ever wanted to build your own ‘Jurassic Park’, your chance is approaching fast.
A dozen life-size dinos, a train, a water slide and several other things you’d find in a dinosaur theme park are up for auction in May via Able Auctions, which is based out of Nanaimo.
A collector in Lantzville and owner of DJ Excavating, Stan Pottie, is selling the dinosaurs he has gathered over several years because of land-use issues with the District of Lantzville.
The district would not allow Pottie to have the permits needed to start a theme park on his land, so now the collector is forced to sell.
“It’s not a bankruptcy or such,” said Brett Johnston from Able Auctions. “He had been getting in trouble with permitting from the city.”
“He wanted to run it as a fun amusement park, not big business, just for fun but he couldn’t get permission from the city to do that so I know he wasn’t very happy about it.”
All Pottie’s many collectibles will be sold as individual items, if other collectors want to add just one or two prehistoric giants to their own dinosaur collections.
Pottie had originally obtained some of his collection through an Able Auctions sale a few years back — they had originally come from a travelling dinosaur show, according to the auction house.
Since then he’s added to his collection all in hopes that his dream park might become a reality.
Some noteworthy pieces he’s gotten his hands on and is now selling are real, authentic props and dinosaurs from the Jurassic World franchise starring Chris Pratt.
“A couple of them were used in the recent Jurassic Park movie,” said Johnston.
“One of the cool ones is Blue, that you can wear. You stand inside of it and there’s a video screen to see where you’re going and controls to move the head and wink the eyes.”
“That was actually Blue from the movie.”
Another impressive piece Pottie is selling is a larger than life T-Rex that’s over 37’ long that growls, moves and chomps.
The online auction will take place on May 25th at 9:30 a.m. and an in-person preview will take place on May 24th.
Whoever wants to buy a dino or a train can will have to pick up their purchases within a week of the auction.
