Tulip mania: when a single flower was worth more than a house

In the 1630s, Dutch tulip bulbs became so valuable that people traded homes and life savings for rare varieties, with some single bulbs worth as much as Amsterdam canal houses. The speculative bubble collapsed in February 1637 when buyers vanished from an auction in Haarlem, causing prices to crash and ruining investors overnight. Today, tulip mania serves as a historical cautionary tale about financial bubbles and irrational market behavior, while the Netherlands remains the world's largest producer of tulips.