Bunch of grapes: 10,000 euros. Going once, going twice, sold!
Visitors to a spa in Japan will soon be able to eat 460-dollar grapes. Or, well, one 460-dollar grape. Takashi Hosokawa, the manager of the spa hotel chain, was the highest bidder at an auction of Ruby Roman grapes in Kanazawa.
Takashi paid 1.2 million yen—just under 10,000 euros—for 24 plump, red grapes. Okay, it is the most expensive grape variety in the world, and the grapes are praised for their juiciness, high sugar content and low acidity, but this variety has never before sold for such an amount.
New era
“We bid 1.2 million yen both to celebrate the twelve years that this grape has existed and to celebrate Reiwa’s first auction,” Takashi said. Reiwa is Japan’s latest era, which began on May 1, 2019, the day Emperor Akihito’s eldest son, Naruhito, ascended the throne as Japan’s 126th emperor.
Marketing stunt
But those surely aren’t the only reasons. “It’s a lot of money for a bunch of grapes, but it’s little money for an advertisement,” Japan expert Lynne Nakano tells CNN. “It’s something a lot of people will talk about because it’s so crazy, so in that sense it’s an economically smart investment.”
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time that people in Japan have paid a lot of money for special fruit. White strawberries at 35 euros per tray, square melons costing 200 euros or strawberries as big as a tennis ball for 4,000 euros? It’s all possible.
#Kanazawa Ruby Roman grapes sell for ¥1.2 million (~$11,000) in first auction of the season @japantimes https://t.co/Ndc9KVkIF6¥1-2-million-kanazawa-auction pic.twitter.com/hhmIP3H3kT
— Japan Society Business & Policy Forum (@JSBusinessForum) July 9, 2019
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