Answer: Chalk

People like what they like and when the thing they like is no longer available, well you know what happens: hoarding. Any time a popular product is taken off the market, people rush in to snatch up any remaining stock of their favorite colas, candy bars, hand cream, or whatever other consumable they can’t live without.

Although their work might be inscrutable to the layman, mathematicians are people through and through and have those same cherished consumables like the rest of us. So what do mathematicians hoard? Chalk.

In early 2015, the Hagoromo Bungu company went out of business. After 83 years in the chalk business, they found there simply wasn’t enough demand left in the global market for blackboard chalk and they closed their doors. The only problem, however, is that sinking demand or not, Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk is considered by blackboard-loving mathematicians to be the ultimate chalk brand, the smoothest and most perfect chalk a brilliant mind could ever put to the slate. As such, mathematicians across the world have been scrambling to buy out supplies, often seeking to purchase enough chalk to last them until retirement.