By Tim Binnall
A missing sea monster carousel figurine has been recovered by a Connecticut theme park after it was stolen a staggering 40 years ago. The remarkable reunion was revealed in a press release from the Quassy Amusement Park on Monday. Known as a 'hippocampus' in carousel enthusiast circles, the ornate figurine had been a fixture at the site for a whopping 70 years before it mysteriously vanished in 1985. Decades of hoping that the pilfered piece would turn up somewhere finally came to fruition for the park's owners when they received an unexpected tip from an antique broker who had a hot tip on the long-lost sea monster.
Roland Hopkins explained that "a guy who bought a collection of circus and carnival stuff in a Florida warehouse" had contacted him about arranging the sale of a particularly impressive hand-carved sea monster carousel figurine. After posting photos of it online, the broker "got an email from an old customer who said he thought it was the sea monster stolen from Quassy in ’85." A subsequent authenticity check confirmed those suspicions, which led to Hopkins alerting the theme park to the wondrous find. Since the piece had been taken so long ago and, thus, the chain of custody among collectors over the years was unlikely to be unraveled, they opted to eschew involving authorities and, instead, worked out a deal to purchase the figurine from the man who happened upon it.
"He is a retired firefighter and had no idea he had bought our stolen hippocampus," park owner George Frantzis II said, "we felt it was in the best interest of both parties to broker a fair agreement." While it is uncertain how much the theme park paid to recover the piece, the original asking price had been a whopping $25,000, so one assumes that they forked over a sizeable sum of money for the lost figurine. For Frantzis, the reunion is particularly bittersweet as his father, who previously owned the park, "frequently referred to that particular hippocampus as his most treasured" of the carousel seats. After being restored, the hippocampus will be displayed at the park as what they called "a timely reminder that “what goes around, comes around.'"