The Narrow Path Ministries

FLORENCE, Italy - A Macau casino mogul bid a record $330,00 at auction Saturday to win a giant white truffle dug up in Tuscany, organizers said.

Billionaire Stanley Ho made the winning bid for the 3.3 pound truffle during an auction staged simultaneously in Florence, London and at Ho's Grand Lisboa hotel in Macau, said auction organizer Giselle Oberti.

The price bested the previous record for a truffle of $212,000, she said.

The unusually heavy truffle was dug up last week by truffle hunter Cristiano Savini, his father Luciano and dog Rocco in Palaia, a town about 25 miles from Pisa. The Savinis said Rocco started sniffing "like crazy" when he zeroed in on the fungus.

Guinness World Records lists a 2.86 pound white truffle found in Croatia in 1999 as the biggest.

Truffles usually weigh from 1 to 2.8 ounces apiece. Slivers of white truffles, with their strong aroma, are prized in Italy to flavor pasta sauces and rice dishes.

Proceeds from the auction were to go to an Italian organization that helps sufferers of genetic diseases, a group that helps street children in London and Catholic charities in Macau.

Calls to Ho weren't immediately returned late Saturday.


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I understand the sellers are donating the proceeds to charity, but I can only hope the buyer would never have thrown away that kind of money on a fungus if it weren't for charity. If charity had nothing to do with it and he paid a third of a million dollars for this thing, (which I assume is the case since this is breaking earlier record price) than I can not help but picture someone trying to shove a pregnant camel through the eye of a needle sideways.

On a somewhat smaller scale, in Australia we have this annual auction:

"The Sydney Children's Hospital is $35,000 better off after the first cherry box of the season was auctioned at the Sydney Markets.
Paul Moraitis of the Moraitis Group forked out the money, approximately $70 per cherry, for the box of about 500 cherries at the 18th Annual Cherry Auction."

I remember being aghast when first hearing of the price for this first box of cherries, until I realized it was a charity auction (although I must confess to at times buying a handful of US imported cherries in the middle of our winter, at $20/kilo)!

I think rich people probably have vastly differing motives in giving to charity, although when it is so public it does tend to bring out the cynic in me; I have to then remind myself I should at least try & give them the benefit of the doubt. That is of course coloured by other info I may have about them.

While I was more actively involved in Autism fundraising, I discovered that most corporations you hear about giving to charity weren't overly concerned with doing good for good's sake.

It was observed that the average company who gives a gift of $50,000.00 to a charity will spend $2,000,000.00 to publicize that gift.

Most would not give to a charity as small as ours not because larger organizations like Autism Speaks were doing better work, but because the larger organization had systems in place to publicly thank large corporate donors in a large public forum.

((Shrugs shoulders))