Tulip mania

Among the various historical accounts of the tulip crisis, one writer put it this way:

The immense expansion of commerce [in the Netherlands] encouraged gambling upon profits to be made from speculation in all kinds of products . ... It was the price that had to be paid for the increased efficiency in the complex system of business. But now and again speculation intensified into a frenzy of what the Dutch called windhandel, literally trading in the wind, that is, buying or selling in futures without actual possession of goods.

The most famous example of such gambling was the tulip mania of 1636-37 involving the bulbs of tulips and hyacinths which had become the modish flowers of the day in their myriad new varieties. Rapidly escalating prices spurred the gambling instincts of all sorts of people, especially in the district of Haarlem. ...

But suddenly in 1637 after prices had soared to fantastic heights, the speculative castle in the sky collapsed. For those who lost fortunes there was tragedy."

(See The Low Countries in Early Modern Times, by Herbert H. Rowen.)

Another account says,

Bulbs were bought and sold and resold dozens of times. They were bought and sold unseen. ... One Amsterdamer made 60,000 gilders in four months, when his annual salary as a burgomaster [mayor] was only 500. ...

The fever kept on getting wilder and wilder until suddenly at the beginning of 1637 the market cracked. In a few days hundreds were ruined. The losses were such that the whole credit system, not merely for tulips, was endangered.

Such was the mania. Among the casualties left out in the cold was Jan van Goven, the Leyden painter. It was remarkable that Rembrandt was not involved.

(Jeffery Cotterall, Amsterdam, the Life of a City.)