The auction says nothing about the tree being a new import... It only states that it was imported.... It could have been imported 30+ yrs ago for all we know
Harry, Ang is right. The seller states that he is part of Hoyoku...which up to recently, use to be based at Bonsai West ...who in turn was a big importer of JBP....sooooooo...my guess would be this is a tree he bought from them for material he wanted to work on as a student of Colin's. Now, for what ever reason, he is dumping it at a probably close to a break even price based on the opening bid... Bonsai West is a lot of things, but one of them is not cheap.
Actually if you think about it...this opening bid is pretty reasonable...If "you" paid for the tree and then paid Colin to work on it with you, the net cost would have been much more.....but then we don't know what the closing bid will be.