Also it may not have been as silly as people make out. The Dutch still have a tulip industry with 2,600 varieties grown over 60,000 acres. It may have been worth spending ~$1m on a bulb if it was superior and you could breed from it and sell a lot.
I don’t think any commodities bubbles were irrational bubbles or good examples of irrational exuberance. Even the beanie babies one was rational until a seemingly permanent supply constriction was alleviated to the surprise of everyone.
So far I’ve narrowed it down to credit bubbles as being actually irrational, like the railroad bonds, and south china sea bubble, over leveraging in real estate market and derivatives with poor accounting of underlying assets
And yet tulips and beanie babies are the ones most cited
