In the 1600s, if you bought anything that didn't come from your village or region, that was a big deal. Tulips were an exotic distant foreign luxury (as frankly any flower would be if you could not grow it in your garden already).
People who bought them were not average, they were privileged and wealthy. Surely no peasant was duped into investing their half-month's worth life savings into tulip futures.
Also, Amsterdam was the first stock and commodities exchange in the world as far a we know (or at least in the west, as written by westerners). So peculiar investments should have been more likely.
Ironically, we now live in a world where non-physical creations with non-physical provenance fetch huge sums because... ? (because there is a lot of excess wealth accumulated by a few people who can piss it away without consequence, or because they can buy it with un-tax-reported currency).