Microsoft co-founder, prolific entrepreneur, and a man with an absolute love for all things that fly, Paul Allen, died last October after a fight with cancer. He was just 65. Portions of his empire are beginning to be slowly sold off, including the world-record breaking "Roc" satellite-launcher aircraft and the company built around it known as Stratolaunch . Now, one of the most impressive pieces of his incredible collection of aircraft, many of which are part of the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum at Paine Field in Everett, Washington has been put on the market. It's widely understood to be the finest example of a MiG-29 Fulcrum in private hands anywhere in the world, and maybe even the finest regardless of ownership arrangement.

The MiG-29 in question is a two-seat UB model that lacks the single-seat Fulcrum's radar. The aircraft, which was used for training, among other roles, was built at the tail-end of the Cold War, in 1989. It saw service with the Ukrainian Air Force during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Eventually, Ukraine refurbished and demilitarized the jet and offered it for sale on the international market around 2005.

It was imported into the United States—one of a very limited number of Fulcrums to have done so—by famed warbird aficionado John Sessions, who runs the Historic Flight Foundation, which is also located at Paine Field in Everett, Washington. Just getting the aircraft to the U.S. was a bizarre and harrowing ordeal, let alone reassembling it, restoring it, and test flying it. The fuselage was impounded in Hong Kong and sat to degrade in a salty-air warehouse for a long period of time before Sessions and his team could finally get it to the Pacific Northwest. You can and should read all about this crazy ordeal in this awesome article.

Sessions meticulously restored the MiG-29UB to an extent never seen before. It was likely the 'cleanest' example of a MiG-29 anywhere in the world once it was done. In 2011, Paul Allen officially bought the jet for an unknown sum of money, but it was absolutely multiple millions of dollars. Sessions had stated the project cost at least $6 million. The Soviet-era fourth generation fighter would become a crown jewel in Allen's Flying Heritage Museum, and fly it would, making regular zoom climbs and flybys over Paine Field in front of onlookers over the years. Allen also owns an F-5B Freedom Fighter and throngs of warbirds, private jets, floatplanes, and helicopters, the latter of which serviced his travels abroad and ferried him and his guests to his incredible superyachts Octopus and Tatoosh.

The "Vulcan Air Force," a reference to Paul Allen's holding company Vulcan, Inc., now appears to be in the early stages of being at least partially liquidated. With this in mind, it's not surprising that the MiG, which has very little real practical use and can burn through a full tank of a thousand gallons of jet fuel in a matter of minutes, while also representing a large initial investment, is being put up for sale now that Paul has passed away.

Make sure to watch this sweet Facebook video with cockpit footage of the MiG-29 doing some low-level flying over the Rockies and more, as well as the videos below.