John Barnes, owner of Denver's Audio Unlimited, called me the other day with some exciting news; He had bought and sold 26 pieces of Cello equipment in less than a week. It had all come from one source, and was sold to a single buyer. And, yes, the buyer was overseas.

The story began, as most do, with a phone call. The house manager of a large home south of Denver was looking to sell "some audio stuff" as part of his duties of cleaning out part of the estate that hadn't been used in nine years. Since John doesn't usually buy and sell used equipment, his first impulse was to say, "Sorry, I don't buy used audio equipment." But when the house manager mentioned "Cello" and "over twenty different pieces" John immediately made an appointment for a couple of hours later.

When he arrived at the very large and impressive manse, he was led to the basement where he discovered the following - two pairs of Stradivarius Grand Master speakers, one Amati center speaker, eight Cello Performance II amps with eight outboard power supplies, an Audio Palette, an Audio Suite, a Cello Reference Standard DAC, and 110 lbs. of Cello Strings cable with Fischer connectors. The speakers were all finished in piano black lacquer, which was an additional upcharge. Total cost for the system when new was in excess of $300,000. According to a reliable source, only 16 of these double chassis Cello Performance II mono-blocks were made.

John did not volunteer what he paid for the system (and I didn't ask), or what he sold it for, but he did tell me that he spent over $3000 alone on new wooden shipping containers for the gear, and the total shipping weight was 3100 lbs.

Lest you think of John as merely a "box flipper" he told me that when he set up the system prior to shipping insure that it was all functionally correct, "It sounded as impressive as you would expect. I wish I'd had the time and a room to set up the entire system properly." The moral of the story is that no matter how busy you are, answering your phone is always a good thing...