A while ago a friend told me that one farmer made close to half a billion rand in a single day by selling some animals. I dismissed his claim with a laugh – that’s crazy money you see, there’s no bloody way.

Enter the auction from this past weekend in Rustenburg, Saturday evening seeing some staggering cash thrown around. The star of the show was a ‘super buffalo’ called Horison, one bidder paying R44 million for a QUARTER SHARE in the animal.

Yes, that puts the total value at R176 million. Turns out Horison has the biggest horns in the world, spanning almost 1,4 metres and his total weight coming in at over a tonne. More below from Fin24:

The bid was won by Peter Bellingham of Mookgophong (Naboomspruit) at leading game farmer Piet du Toit’s auction at his farm near Rustenburg.

“I feel fantastic,” said an overwhelmed, all-smiles Bellingham after the auction. He is a leading game farmer and well known in game breeding circles.

“It was an amazing auction with the types of quality breeding animals for which people are prepared to pay big money.”

Du Toit had bought Horison for R26m in 2012 – in partnership with Norman Adami, former chair of SABMillar Beverages, and Ben Botha of Rustenburg. A mere four years later the animal’s value is more than six times the original price. The previous record price for a buffalo bull was R40m…

“It sounds like unrealistic growth,” said Bellingham. “But you will never find such a buffalo again.

Pretty decent return on that investment for du Toit and the boys, far better than property investment it would seem. Some more numbers to make you froth at the mouth:

After Du Toit’s auction last year, Bellingham said he had spent R230m on animals in 2014. Du Toit thinks Horison could easily breed animals worth a total of R1bn…

According to Wildswinkel, organisers of the auction, the turnover was about R230m, slightly less than the R266m turnover at last year’s auction.

Finally a little about what Bakkies had to say on the matter:

A crowd of 4 000, including well known people like Bakkies Botha and Heyneke Meyer – former Springbok lock and coach respectively – attended the auction.

“Piet has taken the industry to a new level,” said Botha.

Meyer was said to be bidding on a dinosaur who could hopefully understand his coaching methods.

[source:fin24]