The owners, Jane and Peter Hayes, closed the attraction in October 2012 after running it for half a century. The pieces were sold to a secret Czech collector who surely has unique taste. Jane, 83, told Mirror that “all the models and machines and frames were sold in one go.” But the woman doesn’t know who the chap was.
Peter, who ran the museum for 57 years, admitted in 2008 that the models became so old they were no longer lifelike. According to Dailymail, each figure cost around $1,245 to make. The auction estimated that the whole collection was worth up to $14,943, but it’s not clear for how much it was sold to the buyer.
Named after the great-grandson of Madame Tussaud, the museum was located on Regent Road. According to the BBC, it employed three full-time staff members in addition to the Hayeses. People on Trip Advisor expressed their disappointment with the museum’s closure. “It will be sorely missed,” said one user. The other one called it a “sad loss” and said that “Yarmouth will never be the same...”
