The seller, Kimball International, did not accept the highest bid for the entire tract, which was apparently submitted by an agent of the State of Kentucky at $23.3 million.
Negotiations between the highest bidder and Kimball will resume on Monday, according to officials with Woltz & Schrader Auction Company.
What appeared to be a representative of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources was the highest bidder when all tracts were combined. Individual buyers stopped bidding when the price reached just over $23 million. The land had been offered in more than 70 individual tracts but when totaled those bids did not reach the cumulative offer.
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife purchased 1,100 acres at Friday's $10.2-million sale of other Kimball property in northcentral Kentucky. There, the average price per acre was $1,709 on 5,993 acres in Butler, Breckinridge and Meade counties in Kentucky and southern Indiana. The state and 13 other buyers purchased those acres.
On Thursday, 9,422 acres of Kimball lands sold in Indiana to 72 buyers for $15.6 million.
Saturday's auction of the Kimball property that straddles the Tradewater River was the last of a three-day auction as the Jasper, Ind., furniture-maker divested itself of thousands of timberlands in Kentucky and Indiana.
