I do the same thing while looking at a system on a chip; a $9 item today would have been worth millions just 30 years ago.

Same with Cardamom. I still find the lack of Cardamom in the west weird. It is such an incredible spice yet Americans are obsessed with Cinnamon in their sweets.

Cardamom goes really well with sweet stuff.

Cardamom is widely used in Scandinavian sweet baked goods, especially around Christmas.

I also occasionally add a pod when I make a cup of tea.

I'd even go as far as saying this is one of the reasons. From January people are kinda fed up because in Nov/Dev everything tastes like it. At least in my circle of friends sooner or later someone says "this tastes like Christmas" - which is usally an indicator of Cardamom, unless very much hidden in e.g. Indian food.

Agreed, cardamom has an amazing flavor that works in savory or sweet applications. No idea why it’s so underrepresented in western cuisine.

On the other hand, saffron is still ridiculously expensive (or at least the shops often price it like that).

Most spices were expensive because distance and perishing. Faster travel and refrigeration fixed that.

Saffron is expensive because takes an insanely large volume of arable land and manual labor to produce. A saffron crocus plant flowers once per year. It produces about four flowers, and each has three tiny threads of saffron. They are harvested by hand.

To produce a pound of saffron requires about 50,000-70,000 flowers and 40 hours of manual labor.

It is very expensive relative to other foods, and certain varieties of Persian saffron are extremely expensive.

It is also extremely inefficiently used by most chefs. They often merely crumble it into the recipe. You can use a small amount of saffron to flavor a large quantity of food simply by grinding it into powder and mixing with a small amount boiling hot water. The resulting mixture is very potent.

To be fair saffron is the stamen and stylr of Crocus sativus. There's only a few per flower and they only bloom in Autumn.

Yea, think about it. One of the ancient global trade drivers!