Why Are Some Things So Expensive?

What makes Rolls-Royce cars so much more expensive than other cars? And why is a can of Coke more expensive in Los Angeles than in Los Alamos? Or is it?
Fancy Fungus
November 11, 2019, was a great day for truffles, a kind of edible fungi that grows underground. At an auction in Alba, near Turin, Italy, a single truffle sold for 120,000 euros (over $133,000). True, it was no ordinary truffle. This fellow was a genuine white European truffle weighing over 2.2 pounds. That comes to $133.45 per gram. And even that wasn’t the highest price ever paid. In 2012, some truffle-lover paid $300,000 for a single truffle.
Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, truffles are among the rarest foods in the world.
But a truffle is just a fungus, like a mushroom. In fact, it is a kind of mushroom. What makes it so expensive?
Well, unlike mushrooms, which can be grown and harvested, truffles usually cannot be cultivated. You just have to go out and hunt for them where they grow in the wild, in a few places in Italy and France. Hunting is the word for it, too. The professionals use specially trained sniffer dogs to locate the truffles, typically hiding out underground in forests.
And the taste — truffle connoisseurs say it’s worth every penny. You’ll have to take their word for it, though, unless you can afford to do your own taste test.
Truffles are so prized that a black market has grown up around them. Gangsters steal them from restaurants and sell them illegally in back alleys for cheaper prices. They even steal the sniffer dogs so they can hunt their own truffles.
You can buy canned truffles too. But watch out for phonies. Truffles from China are sometimes sold as European truffles, for the same price, but the quality is not nearly as good. Check the label: Even if it says “Product of France,” if the Latin name given is Tuber indicum, send it back to Beijing. The real thing is Tuber melanosporum.
The Ups and Downs of Supply and Demand
Truffles demonstrate why some things are more expensive than others: It’s called the Law of Supply and Demand. If something’s hard to get, people will be willing to pay more. If truffles could be grown as easily as mushrooms, they’d be much cheaper.
Think of antiques. The word comes from the Latin antiquus, which means old. Very few pieces of furniture survive from generations ago. But those that do can be worth a lot.
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