Private Collector Buys Saber-Toothed Tiger Skull for $223,000

A 16,000-year-old saber-toothed tiger skull was auctioned off Sunday in Beverly Hills, going for $223,250 to a private collector.

New York businessman Stuart Pivar submitted the winning bid to I.M. Chait Gallery/Auctioneers, which administered the auction.

Auctioneer David Herskowitz of the Natural History Department at I.M. Chait said the bid was believed to be the highest price ever paid for a saber-toothed skull.

“Some have sold privately for $80,000 to $150,000,” Herskowitz said. “But this is the first time the general public had the opportunity to get one.”

Sunday’s auction focused on more than 215 groups of natural history items, including gems, minerals, dinosaur bones and other fossils. Other curios sold Sunday included a wooly mammoth tusk for $26,000 and a grouping of dinosaur eggs that sold together for $8,000.

The tiger skull was one of two unearthed 40 years ago at a residential construction site near the La Brea Tar Pits.

Herskowitz declined to identify the skull’s previous owner except to say he was a local businessman who was keeping the other skull.