Warren Buffett's Charity-Lunch Auction Draws Bid of $51000

The auction on EBay Inc. generated 18 bids by 4:30 p.m. in New York, according to the website. Bids typically surge in the sale’s final hours. Last year’s winner, a group led by Courtenay Wolfe of Salida Capital, paid $1.68 million, 20 percent less than the 2008 winner as the recession crimped charitable donations.

Buffett, 79, rose to prominence through five decades of investing success. Since the financial crisis, his celebrity has grown as his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. prospered without a U.S. bailout and the billionaire defended Goldman Sachs Group Inc. from public criticism. Guy Spier, who won the auction in 2007, has used his association with Buffett to make business contacts, such as a wealthy man Spier dined with last month.

“He wanted to meet the idiot who’d had lunch with Buffett for that amount of money,” said Spier, a principal at hedge fund Aquamarine Funds LLC whose bidding team paid $650,100. “I think the return on the investment is really quite high. I’ve met so many people I wouldn’t have otherwise met.”

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