Auctioning off the warrants from the TARP bailout funds netted Bank of America $1.57 billion, making it the largest auction of these types of securities ever partaken in by the Treasury Department.

There were two groupings of warrants, appropriately named Group A and Group B Warrants. The Treasury said today that the Group A warrants sold for $8.35 each, with a minimum opening bid of $7. Group B warrants had a minimum opening bid requirement of $1.50, and they sold for $2.55.

After commissions and fees the Treasury Department pocketed $1.54 billion.

Auction onlookers said the price received for the warrants were good ones, as they received fair market value from them, meaning they were acquired by those in it for the long haul.

To give an idea of the success of the sale, other recent auctions of warrants netted $1.1 billion for Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), and one by JPMorgan Chase attracted $950.3 million in December 2009. In the case of Goldman Sachs they bought the warrants back in the middle of the summer of 2009.

So far the Treasury has secured around $5.5 billion from sales of warrants as it attempts to get back the $700 billion in taxpayers’ money provided through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

As far as the warrants themselves which were auctioned by Bank of America, the Group A warrants will expire on January 2019 and can be converted to the same amount of common shares in the company for $13.30 each. Group B warrants expire a little sooner in 2018, and can be converted for $30.79 a piece.

With Bank of America, as with other banks, they negotiated with the Treasury to buy back the warrants. Contrary to Goldman Sachs, they weren’t able to come to a figure both parties could agree upon, so the warrants were auctioned, but the bank in that case receives nothing for them; the reason the Treasury received the $1.54 billion after commissions and fees while Bank of America got nothing for them.