Yubari melons, Ruby Roman grapes and eight more of the world's priciest fruits

Fruit is usually thought of as everyday healthy food, but a small group of fruits sells as luxury goods. Most of them are grown in Japan, where a pair of melons, a single bunch of grapes or one watermelon can fetch prices measured in hundreds of thousands or even millions of yen at the first auction of the season. In May 2026 a pair of Yubari melons sold for a record 5.8 million yen in Sapporo, and on 19 June 2026 a black Densuke watermelon sold for 700,000 yen in Asahikawa. This report, prepared in June 2026, looks at ten fruits that regularly appear on lists of the world's most expensive, what each one is, where it is grown and what the dated auction and shop records show. Prices are given in the currency the reporting source used, and auction records are attributed to the outlets that reported them.

A note on the figures: an opening-day auction price is not the price an ordinary shopper pays. Japanese wholesalers and retailers often bid very high at the first auction of a season for publicity and to celebrate the new harvest, while the same fruit later sells in shops for far less. Both kinds of figure appear below, and each is labelled.

The Yubari melon is a cantaloupe-type melon grown in and around the city of Yubari in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island. It is the fruit most often named as the world's most expensive, because of the bids it attracts at the first auction of each season at the wholesale market in Sapporo, Hokkaido's largest city.

FreshPlaza, the fresh-produce trade publication, reported on 25 May 2026 that a pair of Yubari melons sold for a record 5.8 million yen (it gave the equivalent as US$36,500) at the first melon auction of the season at a Sapporo wholesale market. The winning bidder was Futami Seika Co., a fruit and vegetable wholesaler based in Kushiro, Hokkaido, which sold the melons on to Keio Store Co., a supermarket operator that planned to display them at a store in Tokyo. FreshPlaza quoted Hirokazu Okubo, head of sales at Futami Seika: "I hope the people in Tokyo will enjoy these Hokkaido melons." The same report said growers expected to ship 3,086 tons of melons that season, valued at about 2.12 billion yen (US$13.3 million).

The record beaten in May 2026 dated from 2019. Daily Sabah, carrying an Anadolu Agency report on 24 May 2019, said a pair of Yubari melons had sold for 5 million yen, which it put at more than $45,500, at the season's first auction at the Sapporo wholesale market. The buyer was the Nagoya-based Pokka Sapporo Food and Beverage Ltd., which said it was celebrating the tenth anniversary of its melon-flavoured soda. The report quoted company president Yoshihiro Iwata: "As our company was founded in Sapporo (Hokkaido), I had been thinking there must be something I can do for Hokkaido." It said the bid beat the previous first-auction high of 3.2 million yen, paid the year before, and that Yubari melons normally sold for 4,000 yen ($36) to 10,000 yen ($91) each.

Those last figures show the gap between the auction headlines and the market. The record bids are for a single carefully chosen pair, sold once a year at the opening of the season. The rest of the harvest, thousands of tons of it, reaches shops and gift counters at ordinary retail prices.

Ruby Roman is a large, bright red table grape developed by Ishikawa Prefecture on Japan's west coast, whose capital is Kanazawa. FreshPlaza reported on 10 July 2015 that the variety was selectively bred to emphasise sweetness and low acidity, took 14 years to develop and went on sale in 2008. A later FreshPlaza report, of 9 September 2022, said production is limited to selected farms in Ishikawa, that only farmers with a licence contract with the prefecture may grow it, and that each grape must weigh at least 20 grams and have a sugar content of 18 percent or more to be sold under the name.

Ruby Roman's auction prices have climbed almost every year. In July 2015 a bunch of 26 grapes weighing about 700 grams sold for 1 million yen (about $8,200) at a wholesale auction in Ishikawa, almost double the previous record of 550,000 yen set the year before, FreshPlaza reported; that put each grape at about 38,000 yen (about $315). The buyer was a chef at Hotel Nikko Kanazawa, who planned to serve the grapes as a dessert in the hotel's restaurant, and the report said shop prices could start at around 25,000 yen a bunch depending on quality.

On 19 July 2021 FreshPlaza reported that a bunch had sold for 1.4 million yen ($12,700) at the season's first auction, 100,000 yen more than the year before and a record for the third year in a row. The buyer, through a Kanazawa wholesaler, was the operator of an upscale Japanese supermarket chain in Taiwan, and a record 253 bunches were shipped for that first auction. In its report of 9 September 2022, FreshPlaza said a bunch had sold for a record 1.5 million yen at the first auction in July 2022.

The variety's value has also made it a target. The same 2022 report said Ishikawa learned in 2021 that grapes sold as "Ruby Roman" were on sale in South Korea, and that a DNA test at a government facility in August 2022 found they were genetically the same as the Japanese grape. The prefecture planned to ask the central government to tighten measures against the suspected illegal removal of saplings from Japan.

The Densuke watermelon, known for its black rind and red flesh, is a speciality of Toma, a farming town in Hokkaido, and is marketed by the town's agricultural cooperative, JA Toma. Its scarcity and striking look make it a favourite summer gift.

On 6 June 2008 the Associated Press, in a report carried by NBC News, said a Densuke weighing about 17 pounds had sold for 650,000 yen (US$6,100) at an auction in northern Japan, a record for a watermelon in the country. Citing Kyodo News, the report said the buyer was a marine products dealer who wanted to support local farming, and it quoted Kazuyoshi Ohira of the Tohma Agricultural Cooperative: "This is the highest price on record for a Densuke watermelon." That melon was the first of 65 sold from the season's initial harvest, out of about 9,000 expected for the year.

The season of 2026 opened just over a week before this report. Kyodo News reported on 19 June 2026 that the first auctions had been held that day at wholesale markets in Sapporo and Asahikawa. The top price was 700,000 yen for one melon in Asahikawa, against 600,000 yen in Sapporo; 186 melons were auctioned in Sapporo and 111 in Asahikawa. The winning bidder in Asahikawa was Dohoku Arcs, a supermarket chain based in the city, which planned to offer tastings in its stores. Kyodo said the record remained the 750,000 yen paid in 2019, that growing conditions had been good, and that growers expected to ship 40,000 melons in 2026 with a sales target of 180 million yen, with the harvest peaking in mid-July.

Taiyo no Tamago, which translates as "Egg of the Sun", is a brand of fully ripened mango from Miyazaki Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu. Almost all mangoes grown in Japan are of the Irwin variety, and Miyazaki's ripe mangoes are left to ripen fully on the tree until they fall naturally, which makes them far sweeter and softer than ordinary mangoes, according to the Japanese encyclopedia entry on the brand and the sources it cites. Only fruit that meets strict standards may carry the Taiyo no Tamago name.

Fukuoka Now, a regional English-language publication, reported on 12 April 2019 that at the first auction of the season on 8 April 2019, at the Miyazaki City central fresh market, a box of two Taiyo no Tamago mangoes weighing about 1 kilogram sold for 500,000 yen, about 100,000 yen more than the year before. It said the brand requires a sweetness level of at least 15, and that 1,679 boxes were sold at 31 markets across Japan that day.

In ordinary retail the price is lower but still high. Monocle magazine, writing on 25 July 2025 about Japan's premium fruit trade, said a top-grade Taiyo no Tamago mango could cost up to 20,000 yen.

The only fruit on the list grown outside Asia is a pineapple raised at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, near Mevagissey in Cornwall, in south-west England. The gardens were created by the Tremayne family, who completed the purchase of Heligan in 1569, and were laid out largely between the mid-18th and early 20th centuries. According to the gardens' own timeline, a fully working pineapple pit was in use between 1829 and 1851, when the estate competed with others to grow the largest pineapple. After the First World War the gardens fell into neglect; they were rediscovered in 1990 by Tim Smit and John Willis, a Tremayne descendant, and opened to the public at Easter 1992.

The pineapple pit at Heligan is described as Europe's only remaining example and one of the earliest found by archaeologists in Britain. It was renovated in 1993, and it is heated not by fuel but by fresh horse manure: about 15 tonnes are packed into the outer troughs, and the heat of decomposition passes through gaps in the wall to the central trough where the pineapples grow. The gardens' timeline records the first fruiting of pineapples in 1997, when one was sent to the Queen for her 50th wedding anniversary, and notes that in 2009 the pits produced their first fruit in three years. Pineapples were first grown in Europe in the Netherlands in 1685 and in England only from about 1715, which is why they were once a symbol of wealth.

The labour and manure involved make each fruit extremely costly to produce. A FreshPlaza list of the world's most expensive fruits, published on 6 January 2017, put the value of a Heligan pineapple at over $1,000 each and said each crop takes two years. The fruit is not sold in shops; its price is a measure of what it costs to grow.

Two of the fruits on the list are valued for their shape rather than their taste. Square watermelons are grown in Zentsuji, a city in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. FreshPlaza reported on 4 July 2019 that nine growers there planned to deliver about 600 square watermelons to wholesalers that month, each selling for over 10,000 yen. The melons are raised for about 10 days in plastic containers while still unripe, so that they fill out into cubes of roughly 18 centimetres per side. The report said production began about 50 years earlier as a way of raising the city's profile, and that the square melons are not edible: they are harvested early and sold as ornaments.

The Buddha-shaped pear comes from China. Deccan Chronicle reported on 24 August 2014 that a Chinese farmer had spent six years perfecting a method of placing young pears inside moulds; once the fruit filled the mould it was removed and the pear kept developing on its own. He produced 10,000 pears, which sold for 8 dollars each, and buyers sought them as a sign of good luck.

The idea has spread beyond China. FreshPlaza reported on 20 December 2017 that a Dutch entrepreneur was growing Buddha-shaped pears with plastic moulds supplied by a Chinese company, Fruit Mould. The moulds are placed over the growing fruit at a precise stage, the Lucas pear variety is used and the fruit is harvested in August. That business produced 10,000 pears in 2017 and sold them at 30 euros for a box of ten, mostly direct to consumers and to companies buying them as gifts.

The remaining three fruits are sold through Japan's luxury fruit shops, the best known of which is Sembikiya in Tokyo's Nihonbashi district. Monocle described it in 2025 as a top-tier retailer dating to 1834. Nippon.com reported in September 2016 that deluxe gift boxes and baskets made up 98 percent of the shop's sales, and that its muskmelons sold for 14,000 to 21,600 yen each and a bunch of Seto Giant grapes for 12,960 yen. The 2017 FreshPlaza list priced Sembikiya's Queen strawberries at $85 for a box of 12, describing them as red from tip to base with white seeds and so perfect-looking that people hesitate to eat them.

Dekopon is a large, easy-to-peel citrus with a distinctive bump on top. FreshPlaza reported on 6 April 2021 that it is a hybrid of the Kiyomi and Ponkan citrus, first developed in Japan in the 1970s. A CNN report carried by ABC 17 News on 31 March 2021 said the fruit was born in Japan in the early 1970s and introduced to the United States in 2011 under the name Sumo Citrus; there the trees are hand-pruned, every fruit is picked by hand and packed to prevent bruising, a clay-based sunscreen protects the fruit in summer, and consumers may pay up to $4 a pound. The 2017 FreshPlaza list priced Dekopon at $80 for a box of six in Japan.

Sekai Ichi, whose name means "world's number one", is among the largest apple varieties in the world and is grown mainly in Aomori Prefecture at the northern tip of Honshu, Japan's apple heartland. National Geographic, in a travel feature published on 6 January 2026, said the gourd-sized apples are mostly given as gifts and sell in luxury Tokyo shops for 3,040 yen (£15) to 4,055 yen (£20) each. The 2017 FreshPlaza list put a Sekai Ichi apple at $21 each, weighing about 1 kilogram, and said the trees are pollinated by hand and the apples washed and packed by hand. National Geographic also recalled that after the samurai class was abolished in the 19th century, former samurai in the Hirosaki area were given apple seedlings, which helped apple farming spread in the region.

Nearly every fruit on this list is Japanese, and the reasons lie in how fruit is grown and given there. In a 2016 analysis for Nippon.com, the writer Doi Emi explained that sending premium fruit as a seasonal gift took hold in the early Edo period (1603 to 1867), especially at the year-end seibo and the summer chugen gift seasons, and that the tradition has no real counterpart in Europe. Fruit sold as a gift must be perfectly ripe, delicious and flawless in appearance, and it is often packed one piece to a box.

The same article pointed to the way Japanese fruit is produced. Most farms are small, averaging 2.2 hectares in 2010; about 80 percent of the country is mountainous, so large farmland is scarce; and growing fruit is labour-intensive. Many growers therefore aim at the high-value gift market with premium varieties. Muskmelon growers, for example, leave only one melon on each plant so that all its fragrance goes into that fruit. Fruit has long been treated in Japan as a luxury rather than a staple, and that attitude, the article said, plays a large part in the prices.

The opening auctions add a layer of ceremony. Buyers such as the soft-drink maker that paid 5 million yen for Yubari melons in 2019, or the Taiwanese supermarket operator that paid 1.4 million yen for Ruby Roman grapes in 2021, bid for publicity and to mark the start of the season, and the record prices draw attention to the growing region. Behind the headline bids, the same fruits reach shops at prices that, while high, are paid by ordinary buyers looking for a special gift.

Photo: Captain76 / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Sources: Jagonews24, FreshPlaza, Daily Sabah (Anadolu Agency), NBC News (Associated Press), Kyodo News (via Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun), Fukuoka Now, Monocle, Nippon.com, National Geographic, Deccan Chronicle, ABC 17 News (CNN), The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Wikipedia