Two membership seats on the New York Stock Exchange sold for $2.6 million each, the exchange said on Monday, just shy of the record $2.65 million set in 1999. The bid for seats is now $2.5 million and the offer is $3 million. Today's sales are $190,000 higher than the previous sale on July 6.
The price of seats has risen since the NYSE announced plans to go public and to buy electronic-trading firm Archipelago Holdings Inc on April 20.
The record for seat prices was set on August 23, 1999, according to the NYSE's Web site. There are 1,366 seats on the NYSE.