International and themed versions have different property titles. The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation is helping to support this exhibition and its related events.The following boards are the 3 standard Monopoly Boards (pre-September 2008 US, post-September 2008 US, UK). Well, when Parker Brothers started selling Monopoly in 1935, they marketed it with the inspiring story of how struggling salesman Charles Darrow created the game in his basement to support his family during the Depression. One of my LANDLORD GAME’S replicas will soon be on display at the San Francisco Library as part of a tribute to the first 140 years of Henry George’s 1879/80 bestseller, Progress and Poverty. THE LANDLORD’S GAME was featured on PBS’s HISTORY DETECTIVES (Season 2, Episode 2, 2004), which I recommend as an excellent introduction to the game’s history. This was the basis for Henry George’s single tax theory, and it was this theory that sparked Lizzie Magie to create the Landlord’s Game, a game that began the worldwide craze of Monopoly.” Monopoly is one of the best-selling board games in history sales went up during the COVID-19 pandemic. When friends taught Philadelphian Charles Darrow a folk game called monopoly on a hand-drawn board, he asked them to write down the game’s rules. Therefore, he reasoned, landowners had no right to continually increase rents simply because they owned the land on which the building sat. George believed that everything found in nature – such as land – belonged to everyone and should not be taxed, that the value of land should not rise, and that only what people did to improve land (such as build on it) should be taxed. The book goes into the history of all the locations on the board by color and explained to the reader what Boardwalk was like in the 1930s or how Marvin Gardens. George’s ideas about wealth and poverty caught Lizzie’s attention. “Just as (Charles) Darrow and others who modified Lizzie’s game were inspired by her original idea, it was a writer named Henry George who inspired Lizzie. It is well written with great illustrations.The only disappointment for me occurs near the end of the book in “A Note from the Author,” which, as the below quotation makes clear, misstates Henry George’s Single Tax theory. I recently found the children’s book by Tanya Lee Stone and Steven Salerno Pass Go and Collect $200: The Real Story of How Monopoly Was Invented (Henry Holt and Co. Previously, Monopoly was called the Landlords Game, and Prosperity was another way to play. It was patented in 1904 by a woman named Elizabeth Maggie. Original Monopoly boards manufactured before the Transport Act 1947 and the nationalisation of the railways use the name 'L.N.E.R.' on each title deed card later boards showed 'British Railways' instead.

My purpose has been simply to find more information about, and to make better known, the true story of Monopoly and how it relates to Henry George’s economic theories. Despite the fact that Monopoly is one of the most popular board games of all time, its origins might surprise you.

Monopoly board game origins