Why Two Amsterdam Menus Show Different Prices for the Same Strain

Same strain name, two menus, two prices. Someone must be wrong, right? Not necessarily. Before you call it a mystery, check the date, the format, the variant and what the comparison is actually measuring.

Reason 1: the menus were printed on different days

A menu is a statement made on a date. Menus change, and the archive keeps every dated statement instead of overwriting it. So a €10 gram from a menu seen in July and a €16 gram from a menu seen this week can describe the same shop, honestly. The date travels with the price everywhere on this site, which is why the date is the anchor of every comparison. Check it before you check the price, because a gap between two numbers often dissolves into a gap between two months. The label under the date does part of the work. A menu seen within the last 30 days is fresh and feeds the city medians; an older one is last known and its prices are history. Two lines for the same strain, one from each side of that line, can differ by design rather than by error.

Reason 2: the formats are different

The same strain can be sold as a single gram or as a multi-gram pack, and those are different offers. In the site’s observed-menu window from 21 September to 21 October 2026, weed 1g had a median of €13 per gram across 139 listings, while weed 5g packs had a calculated median of €14 per gram across 187 listings. Dividing a pack total by its weight gives a rate for that pack, not a loose-gram offer at the same rate. The gram-versus-pack guide keeps the two apart, as do the separate format blocks in the price tables.

A second format trap hides inside packs. Some packs are bundles, listed under their own names, and dividing a bundle price by its weight produces a number that describes the bundle, not a loose gram. When two prices for the same strain disagree, ask what each line was actually selling.

Reason 3: the name hides a variant

Menus print names; they don’t prove same-named products are identical. An origin-style label like Cali belongs with the offer - don’t toss it just to merge two lines. Spelling and abbreviations complicate matches too, and printed percentages remain the shop’s wording, not archive measurements. The Cali-versus-Dutch guide explains the label distinction. Matching the variant and format makes the price comparison more precise, but it still does not certify the contents.

Reason 4: one shop is not the city median

Even with the date and format matched, prices differ between shops, and that difference is the market, not noise. For weed 1g in the October window, the middle half of 139 listings across 27 shops ran from €10 to €16 per gram around a median of €13. A menu at €16 sits at the top of the middle half. A menu at €10 sits at the bottom of it. Both are inside the normal range. The observed tails stretch further, from €5 to €35, and a single shop’s line is a sample of one, while the median is a sample of 139. Both of those shops printed within the same 30 days, so the gap between them is the market doing what markets do, and the tails beyond are where unusual menus live.

How to compare two menus fairly

Match the category, unit, variant and freshness first. Weed against weed, loose grams against loose grams, and equivalent printed variant labels against each other. Then read both prices against the weed quartiles if that is the relevant category. A comparison with the centre of a sample answers a different question from the gap between two selected shops. Keep each line’s date attached, because a format match does not make an older observation current. The ranking pages apply format distinctions for the same reason.

The order matters. Category first, because a joint never compares with a gram. Unit second, because a pack total is not a gram price. Variant third, because Cali is part of the name, not a decoration. Freshness fourth, because a spring menu cannot race against this week’s. Only when all four match do two prices become comparable, and even then the honest benchmark is the city quartiles, not the other menu alone.

What even a fair comparison cannot resolve

A fair comparison tells you where two printed prices sit. It cannot tell you which shop has the strain in stock tonight, which product is better, or what the till will charge when you walk in. Those answers live at the shop, and this site does not pretend to have them. Two menus that pass every fairness test can still disagree by a euro or two, and the honest answer is that shops differ. That difference is not noise to be explained away; it is the background variation the medians and quartiles exist to describe. Form an expectation from the menus, then verify on site.

If a gap remains after those checks, the archive may have no further explanation. Do not replace that limit with a guess about quality or costs. Read the median guide for the meaning of a sample’s centre and the October report for its published distribution.

A quick reconciliation checklist

Put the two source lines next to each other and compare their category, printed name and qualifiers, quantity, total and menu date. If one is a pack and one a loose gram, stop before treating the displayed €/g as the amount due. If dates differ, keep the older line historical rather than assuming both were current together. If the wording matches but the price does not, record the difference as an observed difference; the archive may have no evidence to explain it. Then check the median for that category to see where each observation sits in its sample, not to decide which shop is better. This routine turns a contradiction into a clear list of known and unknown details, and it avoids inventing a reason the menus themselves do not provide.