Nope, they were trading tulip bulbs. You have to store those bulbs in good condition so the flower could bloom. Bulbs are not something you can show off with. Once it blooms it is over you cannot show it off like art. So paying price of a house for something you cannot really show off, will spoil quickly, and you could probably sell to next fool for higher price is pure greedy speculation.

Once it’s done blooming, you can extract the bulb and store it until next year, it works quite well. In dry enough soil, you might even get away with leaving it in the ground.

Once is blooming your expensive Picasso is now two or four expensive Picassos, and in the next year you'll have maybe 20 picasso or so. And as everybody wants to have it in their houses you could easily sold 10 and keep the other.

In the tulipmania some people lost money. The few buyers that knew their stuff, with the expertise to know how to multiply, take good care of them and keep it clean of diseases just get rich. If the unique and rare tulip weren't diseased their owner would became extremely rich and famous. Buying it was the logic choice. The same clone of turkish bulb has been sold each year for entire generations of the same european families. Thousands of years after, is still sought for buyers.

You are putting the emphasis on 'speculative' rather then 'bubble'. All speculative markets go through bubble-like phases, and your success in speculating in a market depends quite a bit on your ability to understand what is driving prices in that particular market during the times you are active in them, and in understanding when, and to what extent, they are bubbling. If one thinks tulips are just like art is just like bitcoin is just like cattle futures, you may not be well-enough informed to speculate successfully in any of those markets.

> If one thinks tulips are just like art is just like bitcoin is just like cattle futures, you may not be well-enough informed to speculate successfully in any of those markets.

It looks to me like the parent poster is just trying to explain the facts on the ground, not give investing advice.

> People were buying tulips because it was a sign of wealth and taste and a beautiful rare object to display, just like art. People were speculating on those, just like art. But when people do so with Art and pay millions, nobody bats an eye.

There have actually been a lot of articles about various art bubbles. Here's one from 2016 about a possible contemporary American art bubble[1]; here's one from 2012 about a Chinese art bubble[2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/17/art-mar...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-chinese-art-bubble-is-pop...