£165,000 truffle

One of the biggest truffles found in decades has fetched $330,000 (£165,000) at an auction held simultaneously in Macau, London and Florence.

A Macau casino owner, Stanley Ho, made the record-breaking bid for the white truffle, which weighed 1.5kg (3.3lb).

Luciano Savini and his son found the highly-prized fungus after it was dug up by his truffle dog near Pisa, northern Italy, last week.

From the BBC, which also notes:

Mr Ho outbid British artist Damien Hirst and Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi to the prize, according to the South China Morning Post.

It should be noted that the high price could well owe something to the sale being a charity auction, as with this story from a few years back, where the then-record truffle ended up going bad before it could be eaten.

Posted by David on December 2, 2007 1:38 PM