It turns out that the desire to speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with $610,000, will buy you a cup of coffee. That's the winning bid offered in a charity auction for up to an hour of Cook's time.
As we reported last month, the chance to grab coffee with Cook at Apple's headquarters zoomed past the suggested value of $50,000 set at the Charitybuzz auction site, rising to more than $600,000 in just three days.
The winner hasn't been identified; an earlier glance at the list of bidders suggested that many of them have companies or entrepreneurial projects they might like to discuss with Cook. The winner has one year in which to coordinate a date to grab coffee with the executive.
The proceeds of the auction, in which Cook and other celebrities are taking part, benefits the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Perhaps to keep any would-be bidders from using the auction as a way to get free publicity, the Charitybuzz site added a note to the Cook auction requiring any bids of more than $500,000 to be authenticated with financial records.
The winning bid places a much greater value on Cook's time than his annual salary reflects. When the bid surpassed the $600,000 mark, our calculations found that if all of Cook's time were to be valued at the same rate, he would earn more than $1.25 billion in a year.