Shipwreck champagne sold to anonymous bidder

MARIEHAMN, Finland – Finnish officials say an Internet bidder has paid €54,000 ($78,235) for two bottles of 200-year-old champagne found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Auctioneers in Mariehamn say that an anonymous buyer from Singapore paid a world-record price of €30,000 for a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and €24,000 for a bottle of Juglar.

Both bottles are believed to be the oldest preserved examples of their respective brands.

Friday's auction was held in the capital of the autonomous Aland Islands, a Finnish archipelago situated between Sweden and Finland. Divers last year salvaged 145 bottles of champagne from the shipwreck, at a depth of 165 feet (50 meters) on the seabed.