The Caviar Con

And yet, it’s a sign of the desperate times that a four-ounce jar of paddlefish caviar — a byproduct that for years local fishermen tossed back with fish guts — now sells for $60 on Amazon. Down in Warsaw, Rob Farr, the local agent who invited Hitchings to visit, had seen caviar poachers before. Most of the Eastern European fishermen in Warsaw would have heard stories from their grandfathers about the 1930s, when Soviet apparatchiks ensured that a tin of caviar only cost twice as much as butter.

Source: longreads.com