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Vintage Monopoly Boards
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The Popular Old Game of Monopoly Makes Big Money
By Rosemary McKittrick
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Second earliest "Monopoly" game set, handmade by Charles Darrow, sold for $23,000. Photo courtesy of Sotheby's |
Admit it! You spent more than a few hours as a kid at the kitchen table or on the front porch playing Monopoly with family and neighborhood cronies. Maybe you rarely finished a game, but still managed to begin more than you care to remember.
Next to chess and checkers, Monopoly reigns as the "king" of board games.
How about this for duration: The longest Monopoly game (with rotating teams of players) lasted 49 days or 1,176 hours. The longest game with the same four players was 264 hours, 11 days and nights. Statistics for Monopoly go on and on.
Recently, Forbes magazine increased the numbers by paying $51,750 for three versions of the early Monopoly. “We thought the games were appropriate for the collection of a magazine about money," says curator Mary Ellen Sinko, who did the bidding at Sotheby's, Nov. 1, 1993, sale of printed and manuscript Americana.
Charles Darrow, an unemployed heating engineer from Germantown, Pa., was originally thought to be the creator of the Parker Brothers game in 1933. Story has it that Darrow, penniless during the Depression, sat reminiscing one evening about the good old days, when he and his family could vacation in Atlantic City. He started sketching the game board on a piece of oilcloth that covered his kitchen table.
Later research revealed that Darrow had actually learned the game from a man named Charles E. Todd in Philadelphia, who held regular Monopoly nights for guests in his home. Pretending to be the inventor, Darrow approached Parker Brothers and sold the game. He retired as a millionaire at 46. His version of Monopoly hammered down at $23,000.
Included in the Charles Todd Monopoly variation is the game board, made of a 22-inch square cloth drawn and colored by hand; 28 deeds typed on slips of yellow paper; 48 houses and hotels made from pinewood molding; and printed money. The game is similar to the one we play today, and sold for $17,250 at Sotheby's.
Another Monopoly set, a wooden hand painted square game board developed by Joseph A. Buckwalter in the 1920s realized $11,500. The earliest example known of the game, from about 1904, was devised and published by Lizzie J. Magie. The handmade version of Monopoly called "The Landlord's Game," is considered to be the one from which all other forms of Monopoly descended.
Parker Brothers found out about Charles Darrow's deception shortly after they purchased his Monopoly. Yet, the game was becoming a big hit, and they knew if it came out that Monopoly were actually a 30-year-old folk game they couldn’t patent it.
So they quietly went about buying the rights to pre-Darrow editions of Monopoly. Magie got $500 for her Landlord's Game, and a big promotion by Parker Brothers shortly afterward billed Darrow as the creator of the game. |
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