By Tim Binnall
A Cheeto resembling the wildly popular Pokémon character Charizard fetched a staggering $87,840 at an auction held over the weekend. According to Goldin Auctions, which facilitated the sale on Sunday, the weirdly shaped snack food of the Flamin' Hot variety "was initially discovered and preserved sometime between 2018-2022" by a collectibles store in Georgia. After being showcased online last year, the oddity dubbed 'Cheetozard' went viral in the Pokémon community in which fans are known to drop sizeable sums of money to acquire hard-to-find cards.
As such, at an auction of the Cheeto over the weekend, it was no surprise that a bidding war broke out among collectors hoping to get their hands on the one-of-a-kind snack food abnormality. When the proverbial orange dust finally settled, following a whopping sixty bids, the final price of the Cheeto had gone from an initial $250 to a jaw-dropping $72,000. With the auction house's premium attached, the final price attached to the peculiar piece was $87,840, which will be forked over by a yet-to-be-identified buyer who, one imagines, is an enormous Pokémon fan.