While the Dow waits to hit 20,000, Warren Buffett just passed one of his own milestones. Class A shares of his Berkshire Hathaway company hit a record high price of $250,419.50 in a morning trade Tuesday. That milestone was achieved 54 years and one day after Buffett bought his first Berkshire shares.

Buffett bought those first shares for $7.50 - or $60.03 in 2016 dollars. He acquired more than half ownership by 1965. Currently, Buffett holds 18% of the class A-shares, with a market value at just shy of $73 billion as of the end of Monday trading. And throughout it all, Buffett has steadfastly refused to split the A shares on the belief that he wants only serious investors involved with the company.

 

"I don't want anybody buying Berkshire thinking that they can make a lot of money fast," Buffett told biographer Alice Schroeder in the book "The Snowball."

Retail investors without such deep pockets can invest in Berkshire through the company's B-class shares, which carry correspondingly lower voting power. They are priced never to exceed 1/1,500th of the company's value. Those shares were trading around $166, and like the Class A shares, they have appreciated about 26% in 2016.

Buffett, who began buying Berkshire shares in late 1962, holds 18 percent of the class A-shares, with a market value at just shy of $73 billion as of the end of Monday trading.