> In the early 1600s, the first economic bubble, and resulting crash, involvedwhich product in the Netherlands?And the answer: tulips. Hand illustration showing different markings and varieties of tulipsAlso knownas "tulip mania," the tulip bulb market bubble is one of the most famous marketbubbles and crashes of all time. As tulips became very popular and fashionablein the early 1600s, prices for the bulbs reached extraordinarily high levels,and then dramatically collapsed in 1637.It all began in 1554. A Flemish ambassador to the Sultan of Turkey, Ogier deBusbecq, sent tulip bulbs to Vienna from the Ottoman Empire. Soon after,botanists began to realize that the gorgeous flowers were able to grow andthrive in the harsher conditions of the Netherlands. The flower's uniquecoloring rendered the bulbs exotic and desirable, quickly becoming a statussymbol. Multicolored intricate lines and flame-like streaks on the petals werevivid and spectacular, making the bulbs that produced these plants highlysought-after. Interestingly, it is now known that this effect is due to thebulbs being infected with a type of tulip-specific virus, known as the "tulipbreaking virus," so called because it "breaks" the one petal color into two ormore.As the flowers grew in popularity, professional growers paid higher and higherprices for bulbs with the virus, and prices rose steadily. In 1636, tulip maniabecame so intense and commercialized that oftentimes transactions of great sumswould take place without transferring bulbs from hand to hand. Many men made andlost fortunes overnight. However, this craze was short lived. In 1637, an outbreak of the bubonic plaguekept buyers home from a bulb auction, and prices crashed to unsalvageabledepths. Today, tulip mania lives on as a term to describe great discrepancies inprice and value of goods. A Satire of Tulip Mania by Jan Brueghel the Younger (ca. 1640) depictsspeculators as brainless monkeys in contemporary upper-class dress. In acommentary on the economic folly, one monkey urinates on the previously valuableplants, others appear in debtor's court and one is carried to the grave.