The Monopoly Game

The Monopoly Game is one of the top 10 Great American Toy Classics.

The original Monopoly Game board uses Atlantic City street names and places, including the boardwalk. Atlantic City is often called "Monopoly City."

The Monopoly Game is named after the economic concept of monopoly: the domination of a market by a single provider. Monopoly is a board game where players compete with each other buying, improving, and renting properties in Atlantic City. In the game, "Boardwalk" is the most expensive property to purchase and develop, but also yields the greatest rent payoff for its owner.

To start the game, Players are initially allocated a stake of play paper money by "The Bank."

Using a board consisting of 40 spaces and 28 properties on Atlantic City streets, players roll dice to advance clockwise around the spaces on the board. If they move and land on a space containing an un-owned property, they can purchase it from "The Bank." Some properties are more valuable and costly than others. If the property is already owned by another player, rent must be paid. Owners can increase the value of their properties, and therefor the rent they receive, by buying houses and hotels to place on them from "The Bank." The game board uses 22 streets, divided into 8 color groups. A player must own all of a color group
(have a monopoly) in order to place houses or hotels on them. Players can also trade properties among each other.

As the game advances, through both luck and the choices made, some players accumulate more properties and money, while others lose. Players who run out of money go bankrupt. As more players go bankrupt, the surviving player is the winner.

The game can be played by from two to six people. Each player is represented by a small metal token that is moved around the board according to the roll of two dice. Parker Brothers states that 45 minutes is about the right time for a game, but a game can go on for hours.

Although the original Monopoly Game was based on Atlantic City, versions now exist for many other cities, including those from other countries. The British version, is based on London.

Games also exist that use assets other than real estate, such as NFL Monopoly, which uses 22 NFL teams instead of streets, that you can buy, sell or trade. An Electronic Banking Edition of the Monopoly Game uses an ATM and Visa debit cards in place of a bank and paper money.

According to Parker Brothers, since 1935, approximately 750 million people have played Monopoly. It is the best-selling board game in the world, sold in 80 countries and produced in 26 languages.

In 1963 General Mills bought Parker Brothers and merged it with their subsidiary "Kenner." In 1987, Kenner was aquired by Tonka Inc. Then in 1991, Tonka was bought by Hasbro. The Hasbro Toy Co. now produces and sells the monopoly game.

Some one-of-a-kind monopoly sets, constructed with special materials such as leather, rosewood and even jewels have been produced. A Monopoly game made by Alfred Dunhill with gold houses and silver hotels sold for $25,000. There are also numerous unique Collector's Edition Monopoly Games.

The newest version of the Monopoly Game is the Here & Now: The World Edition. To find out about this version follow this link: Monopoly World Edition.

You can see numerous examples of other variants of the Monopoly Game on our Monopoly Editions page.