OFF BEAT: Lunch with Warren Buffett costs winning bidder $3,456,789

The economy may be emerging from a recession, but you wouldn’t know it from the annual take-Warren Buffett-to-lunch auction.

For $3.5 million—or more exactly, seven consecutive numbers, $3,456,789—an anonymous bidder and seven others will get to have lunch with Mr. Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York, according to news reports.

That’s more than a 30% increase over last year’s record-breaking $2.63 million eBay bid.

Auction proceeds benefit the San Francisco-based Glide Foundation, a social services organization that provides more than 1 million meals annually to 3,000 individuals in the San Francisco Bay area.

This is the 13th year the auction has been conducted. According to news reports, it was an exciting one. In the final hour of the bidding on Friday, bids jumped from $1 million to the final $3.5 million. There were 106 bids. Bidding started at $25,000 and all bidders had to be pre-qualified.

But attendees cannot expect any hot stock tips. The only topic Mr. Buffett will not address is potential future investments, according to reports.

However, Ted Weschler, who won the past two auctions, landed a job working for Berkshire Hathaway as an investment manager.