Demand for this coffee, however, has raised concern among animal rights campaigners. Even the man who introduced it to Western markets, Tony Wild, is petitioning for the trade to stop due to concerns over illegal poaching of civet cats and the conditions they are kept in by unscrupulous farmers trying to cash in on the high price of kopi luwak.

To make matters worse, some coffee experts even claim that despite its high price, kopi luwak isn’t any better than a good cup of ordinary coffee.

But despite its inflated price, kopi luwak is far from being the most expensive coffee around. That accolade goes to Black Ivory Coffee from Thailand, where the beans have passed through the stomachs of Asian elephants. A kilogram will set you back $1,800.

Tea drinkers can also enjoy a wallet-lightening brew too. Da Hong Pao tea is a dark Oolong tea that is grown in the rocky soil of the Wuyi Mountains of northern Fujian, China. It comes from just a handful of bushes that apparently date back up to 350 years, although cuttings taken from these plants have led to younger and cheaper varieties.

In 2002, 20g of Da Hong Pao tea sold for almost $28,250, meaning a kilogram would fetch more than $1.4m - more than 33 times the price of gold, which currently sells for around $41,500/kg.

With the last harvest from these trees occurring in 2005 and no more likely in the future, the few grams of original Da Hong Pao being hoarded by collectors will only now go up in value.

Viagra

Money cannot buy you love, according to the cliche, but it can buy you a brief moment of happiness – at least if you are using it to buy a certain little blue pill.

Viagra was initially developed in 1989 by scientists at drug company Pfizer to treat high blood pressure and angina, but during testing they noticed some unusual side-effects. Nine years later the drug was licensed for the treatment of erectile dysfunction in men and it quickly became one of the company’s biggest revenue streams, peaking at $2bn in 2012.

At the start of this year Pfizer announced that it was increasing the price of its blue Viagra pills in the US by up to 39% compared to January 2017, according to reports in The Financial Times, a 100mg tablet jumped from $57.94 to $80.82.

The company has now started to produce a cheaper generic version of the drug, which is sold as a white pill, after signing a deal to let other companies produce their own Viagra copycat drugs. But it is clearly still banking on customers wanting the original blue pill.

Of course, Viagra is far from being the most expensive drug available – some treatments for rare genetic conditions can cost tens of thousands for just a month’s supply of tablets. One drug used to treat the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis costs $750 for a single pill (though this price hike provoked outrage).

Drug companies producing these expensive pills argue the price is necessary to cover the huge investment they make in researching, developing and trialling these drugs before they come to market.