What costs more than Gold in the local supermarket?
The answer to the title is Saffron, a type of spice derived from a small purple flower, which is considered one of the most expensive spices in the world.
We were out shopping last night at Coles getting the weekly groceries. I managed to snap this picture on my camera phone of some pure saffron in the spices isle. Coles has a handy price comparison table that allows you to compare different brand products to one another. In this case you can see that 10 grams of saffron is equal to $1349.00, absolutely stunned me.
It was only later that I did a quick Google search to see how much Gold is sold for these days to see just how expensive saffron is gram for gram.
See below graph: The movement of gold at the time of writing this is $46 AUD per gram. That is equal to $460 dollars for 10 grams. This saffron is sold for $1349.00 per 10 grams.
Saffron is nearly TRIPLE the amount gram for gram compared to gold. Wow!!!
Starting tomorrow I am upturning my backyard and dumping a bag of saffron seeds. If work calls tell them I am now a saffron farmer.
But seriously reading the Wikipedia article, the plant seems not very demanding. It just doesn’t produce much saffron as this paragraph states:
Roughly 150 flowers together yield but 1 g of dry saffron threads; to produce 12 g of dried saffron (or 72 g moist and freshly harvested), 1 kg of flowers are needed. One freshly picked flower yields an average 30 mg of fresh saffron or 7 mg dried.
Here are some pictures of the saffron flowers:
The Real Sasha 
Delicious though
Looks like bad maths on the part of the supermarket. It doesn’t say how much saffron is in that pack, but this would imply that there is 0.1g here, whereas it is more likely to be 1g. If that’s the case then 10g would actually cost $134.90, which is still pretty steep, but considerably less steep than $1349.00!
Ergo gold is about 3.5 times pricier than saffron, rather than the other way around. I was just looking it up myself when I stumbled across your article which shocked me a bit!
Good work with the level of commitment here, though!
http://shop.coles.com.au/online/national/hoyts-pure-saffron
the pack is 0.1g
Yes the pack of saffron in Woolworths is 0.1 grams ie one tenth of one gram for $13.49, over a hundred grand per kg
Actually this is very expensive saffron you can buy it from a more reasonably priced retailer for less than $10 per gram. much more affordable !
Here is a link to Coles website selling Saffron, 0.1 grams for for $15.18 ie $1518.00 per 10 grams. that would equate to $151.8k per kilogram.
http://shop.coles.com.au/online/national/hoyts-pure-saffron
I would imagine that cheaper saffron can be acquired from the markets and that if you are buying a kilo of the stuff that some sort of quantity discounting comes into play.
You can buy a gram of safron for $10. Where is this shop?..It must be in Cookoo and!
Spices Inc. on the net (they only sell premium quality spices) are selling a gram of Saffron for $10. Where is the above shop?…It must be in Cookoo land!…
If anybody I have kashmiri pure saffron….one gram price is Indian currency 300 rs…u can interested so call my no 8549006269
Kashmir Pure Saffron You Can from Kashmironlinestore.com