Jeff Faughender/Courier Journal via Imagn Content Services, LLC
State fairs tend to feature plenty of competitions that give participants the chance to earn a ribbon, a small cash prize, and, most importantly, bragging rights over the rest of the field. However, there’s one event at the Kentucky State Fair that’s a much bigger deal to the point where a ham that was dubbed the “Grand Champion” was auctioned off for $10 million.
Massachusetts can stake a claim to having America’s oldest state fair thanks to the inaugural gathering that was put together in 1811, but Kentucky was also a member of the vanguard with the event that was held in the Bluegrass State for the first time all the way back in 1816.
The Kentucky State Fair is still going strong more than 200 years later, and each year, hundreds of thousands of people flock to the expo that’s been held in Louisville since 1956 to experience the multiday affair that allows residents across the state to showcase their prowess in fields including agriculture, baking, quiltmaking, and more.
There isn’t a single event that garners more attention than the country ham competition, which serves as the basis for the Ham Breakfast that was first organized in 1964. That meal included an auction where the winning piece of pork was sold for $124, which is a far cry from the eight-figure price that’s recently become the norm.
A ham that sold for $10 million at the Kentucky State Fair was auctioned off for a good cause
The Guinness Book of World Records currently lists a leg of Iberian Bellota as the most expensive commercially available ham ever sold, as it retailed for around $13,200 in Japan when it earned that distinction in 2020.
However, that’s pocket change compared to what the top bidders at the Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast have shelled out in recent years for the dry-cured cut that was named the best of the best by the judges who evaluate the entries before naming a “Grand Champion” based entirely on sight, smell, and texture.
In 2024, the 18.2 lb. country ham that was submitted by Broadbent B&B set a Kentucky State Fair record when it sold for $10.5 million (the equivalent of around $5769,23 per pound) at the auction that was held at the 60th annual Ham Breakfast. The winning bid was submitted by Joe Craft, the president of CEO of the coal company Alliance Resource Partners, and his wife Kelly, a former ambassador to Canada and the United Nations.
As you can probably surmise, there was no logical reason for that ham’s astronomical price tag. The auction is designed to raise money for charities designated by the winning bidder, and the Crafts got a tax break while also benefiting Kentucky’s Boys and Girls Clubs and supporting recovery efforts from the floods that hit the state in 2022.
This year, Broadbent B&B (which sells its whole country hams for between $80 and $230) successfully defended its crown ahead of the breakfast where the Crafts teamed up with Central Bank CEO Luther Deaton to go halvesies on the ham that sold for $10 million (valuing the 16.5 lb. ham at approximately $606,000 per pound).
According to The Courier Journal, the funds will be distributed to support a number of different worthy causes around the state.