140-year-old unopened bottle of beer fetches huge sum

An unopened 140-year-old bottle of beer from an Arctic expedition sold for thousands at auction.

According to the BBC, a bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale, a beer brewed for Sir George Nares' 1875 expedition to the North Pole, was recently discovered in a garage in Britain. The auction house, Trevanion & Dean, expected to bring in around a thousand dollars -- but the auctioneers had no idea how much attention the item would receive.

"The internet went bonkers when the item came up," Aaron Dean, a partner at the auctioneer, told The Drinks Business. "We have all seen empty bottles from the 19th Century but this bottle went all the way to the Arctic circle and came all the way back. How many more of those will we see? Not many. There are many collectors when it comes to exploration and this fitted into that. It was historically fun."

The winning bid of $5,131 came from a private collector in Scotland over the telephone. It's supposedly a sweet beer with a hint of tobacco, but the collector will most likely keep it sealed.

Sir George Nares led the expedition towards the North Pole in 1875, however, the attempt was unsuccessful. Instead the crew mapped the coastlines of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. The channel running between the two land masses was named Nares Strait in his honor.