How much is an hour with Apple CEO Tim Cook worth? Roughly a 2013 Lamborghini Aventador judging by the final results from a CharityBuzz charity auction. That auction closed Tuesday at US$610,000, tying CharityBuzz's previous record for the above-mentioned super car.
Mr. Cook offered up a coffee date to auction to benefit the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The coffee will take place on Apple's campus, and while the time wasn't specified, it's expected to last an hour. Consider that a safety valve in case the winner turned out to be a really rich creep.
In any event, the auction was estimated to raise $50,000, but the auction blew past that mark in the first 24 hours. On April 25th, it stood at $190,000, and by May 6th, that total had been pushed to $605,000.
Bidders includes included app developers, case makers, tech execs, a photographer wanting to talk about human rights in Asia, a Bluetooth developer named Kerb Karma, and Other World Computing CEO Larry O'Connor.
It stood at $605,000 until the last few hours when an anonymous bidder named “a********s” pushed it up on last mark to $610,000, beating out “J********n.” The winner has a year to come up with a date that works for both parties, and word of the identity hasn't yet made it into public knowledge. Neither CharityBuzz nor Apple is under any obligation to disclose the winner's identity.
In the meanwhile, Mr. Cook has put his mug, his name, and his time up to benefit a great charity, something that investor wizard Warren Buffet has done for years. In June of 2012, a lunch with Mr. Buffet went for a staggering record of $3.46 million.