A spirited 15-minute bidding war between online and phone participants ultimately landed the ultra-rare specimen with an anonymous buyer, far surpassing its initial estimate of $2-4 million.

Yesterday, auction house Sotheby’s just auctioned off the largest known Martian meteorite. The stone NWA 16788 sold for $5.3 million, more than expected and the highest price ever for a meteorite. The largest Martian meteorite on Earth The Sotheby’s auction for meteorite NWA 16788,

The largest piece of Mars on Earth became the most valuable meteorite ever sold at auction at Sotheby’s annual ”Geek Week,” and a full Ceratosaurus skeleton fetched $30 million. Next up for bidding: an Apple computer hand-built by Steve Jobs.

Add this to the list of "things that might be fun if you had a buttload of money": Someone forked over $5.3 million in a Sotheby's auction to own a piece of Mars. The Red Planet meteorite was discovered in 2023 in a remote area of the Sahara Desert in Niger.

A 54-pound meteorite from Mars, believed to be the largest piece of the planet currently on Earth, sold in a Sotheby’s auction for $5.3 million after a 15-minute bidding war to quickly become the most valuable meteorite ever sold at auction.

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million.