What if you bought Tulip bulbs (Semper Augustus) in 1990?
Hype · Classic. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.0× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Tulip bulbs (Semper Augustus) at the start of 1990 would be worth about $1,000 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
What happened: Tulip bulbs (Semper Augustus) peaked in 1637 — you're a little late.
The story
The Semper Augustus was the most prized tulip of the Dutch Golden Age, a red-and-white flamed bulb whose striking pattern was caused, unknown at the time, by a virus. During the tulip mania of the 1630s, prices for rare bulbs rose to extraordinary levels, with contracts traded in taverns rather than on formal exchanges. Accounts from the period describe single bulbs exchanged for the price of a fine Amsterdam house, although historians debate how many of these deals were ever paid.
The mania peaked in February 1637, when buyers at an auction in Haarlem suddenly failed to show up and prices collapsed. Many contracts were never honoured, and the courts largely declined to enforce them. Later writers, notably Charles Mackay in 1841, turned the episode into the archetype of speculative bubbles. Some modern historians argue the economic damage was modest. The Semper Augustus itself is no longer cultivated, so in this game its value stays flat: you missed the action by a few centuries.
The lesson: Every generation thinks its bubble is different, but the pattern of rising prices attracting buyers who expect further rises is as old as markets themselves.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $19,429 | 1.0× |
| 1995 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $14,783 | 1.0× |
| 2000 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $4,626 | 1.0× |
| 2003 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $7,727 | 1.0× |
| 2005 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $5,763 | 1.0× |
| 2007 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $4,789 | 1.0× |
| 2008 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $4,626 | 1.0× |
| 2010 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $6,071 | 1.0× |
| 2012 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $5,312 | 1.0× |
| 2015 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $3,301 | 1.0× |
| 2018 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $2,519 | 1.0× |
| 2020 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $2,092 | 1.0× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $1,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Tulip bulbs (Semper Augustus) is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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