The $8,000 Pineapple...
People used to rent pineapples.
Not to eat, not hold, but to carry to a party and walk around with so everyone could see it. Then… you’d return it the next day. That same pineapple would get rented out again and again and again, until it finally rotted.
In 18th century England, a single pineapple could cost the equivalent of about $8,000. And no, that’s not a typo. Eight.. thousand.. dollars. For a fruit. People who could afford to buy one didn’t eat it either. They put it in the middle of the dinner table as a centerpiece, let their guests stare at it all night, and then… had it taken away. The pineapple wasn’t food, it was a flex.
King Charles II was so into pineapples that he commissioned a portrait of himself being handed one. Not eating it. Being handed it. That very painting hangs in a museum. A king, in full royal attire, receiving a pineapple like it was a crown. And in a way… it was.
Pineapples got carved into furniture. Sculpted onto buildings. Painted onto carriages.
There are stone pineapples sitting on top of garden gates across England right now that have been there for three hundred years, put there specifically so visitors would understand that the person who lived inside was very, very wealthy.
The reason for all of this was actually very simple.
Pineapples came from South America, so getting one to Europe meant putting it on a ship and hoping the ship was fast enough so the fruit didn’t rot before it arrived.
The ones that made it were worth a fortune because they were basically a miracle of logistics. You couldn’t grow them in England either because the climate there was always wrong. So for almost two hundred years people tried and failed and the ones who actually figured it out, built special heated rooms called hothouses… just to keep a pineapple plant alive through winter. The cost of building and running a hothouse to grow one pineapple was more than most people made in a year. Then… a 22 year old from Massachusetts moved to Hawaii and ruined all of it.
