It seems that the tulip bubble between October 1636 and February 1637 was not all it appears to have been. See the fascinating paper by Thompson: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/thompson/Document97.pdf

In short, the "bubble" was the result of a general (and correct) expectation that the law would be changed to allow buyers to cancel futures contracts if the spot price fell below the futures price. The only cost to the buyer would be a fee of a few percent of the futures price. This, in effect, compulsorily converted futures into call options. The result was simply that sellers of such "futures" contracts (now in reality call options) increased the contract prices 30 fold to reflect the fact that the "price" was now a strike price rather than a sale price.  The underlying spot price in tulips hardly moved at all.