The difference between a $200 and a $2000 bottle of wine is mostly how expensive the thing you are drinking is. Tons of industries and products work like this. Why would it surprise you that gems are any different?
Yes, but the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $200 bottle of wine is hardly any bigger than the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $2000 bottle of wine.
It makes perfect sense to me why people would drink the $2000 bottle of wine. Why not? They've got the money.
If you balk at a $2000 bottle of wine, you're probably not casually drinking $200 bottles of wine either - and if you are - you're in a very small percentage of people where the price difference means something. It's maybe 2% of the population.
The other 97.75% isn't buying $200 bottles of wine. And the other 0.25% can buy $2000 bottles just fine.
I don't think this is correct. Most wine nerds/enthusiasts I know (and I include myself) would consider dropping $200 on one of their 'dream bottles' in the right circumstance, especially if splitting the cost with a couple of friends. I don't know a single person who would ever drop $2000 on a bottle of wine under any circumstance.
I also have a friendly relationship with a local wine shop, where I usually buy bottles for 10-15 bucks. They also carry (and sell) many bottles at 5K a pop and up.
And if you want to get all mathematical about it, assuming the right kind of power law distribution, it is more likely to see one person who would pay 2000 for a bottle than to find 2 people who would pay 200.
power law stats is weird. Once you are outside of the bell, the bell area has NO constraint on the observation. Unlike Gaussian and similar distributions, where probability falls off very rapidly as you move out of the bell.