50 Fun Facts About Monopoly

How many spaces are there on a standard Monopoly board?

Twenty-eight of them are properties: 22 streets, four railroads and two utilities.

How much salary do you collect for passing GO?

Each player starts the game with $1,500, and newer sets put $20,580 in the bank in total.

How much money does each player start with in standard Monopoly?

The bank in a post-2008 US set holds $20,580 in total, up from $15,140 in older editions.

The streets on the original American board are named after streets in which New Jersey resort?

A Quaker teacher named Ruth Hoskins brought the game to Atlantic City and redrew the board with local street names.

Which company first published Monopoly in 1935 and remained its owner until 1991?

Hasbro bought Parker Brothers, and the game with it, in 1991.

Monopoly is derived from The Landlord's Game, patented in 1904 by whom?

She designed it to demonstrate Henry George's single-tax theory, and Parker Brothers bought her patent for $500 in 1935.

The Landlord's Game was originally intended to teach players what?

It shipped with two rule sets, one monopolist and one anti-monopolist, and only the cutthroat version caught on.

Which Depression-era salesman was long credited with inventing the game, though he copied a friend's set?

A patent was issued in his name on December 31, 1935; the truth came out in court records during Ralph Anspach's Anti-Monopoly lawsuit in the 1970s.

The publisher rejected the game in a 1934 letter for which reason?

The often-repeated tale that they listed "52 design errors" is part of a company-invented creation myth.

What was the mascot Mr. Monopoly originally called?

He first appeared on Chance and Community Chest cards in 1936 and was renamed in 1999.

Which token replaced the iron in 2013 after a public vote?

The cat won 31 percent of the vote; four years later a penguin, a T. rex and a rubber duck replaced the thimble, wheelbarrow and boot.

Which three tokens were retired in 2017?

Their replacements were a penguin, a Tyrannosaurus rex and a rubber duck, chosen by online vote.

Which yellow property on the American board is a misspelling of a real place?

The real Marven Gardens is a housing area in Margate City, just outside the resort; the misspelling was never corrected.

The Short Line railroad on the board takes its name from what kind of real service?

The Reading, Pennsylvania and B&O were real railroads serving Atlantic City; the Shore Fast Line was a streetcar line.

According to the official rules, what happens when you land on Free Parking?

The house rule of putting taxes and fines in the middle for the next visitor to collect is common enough that many players assume it is official.

How many Chance and Community Chest cards does a standard set contain in total?

There are 16 of each, including two Get Out of Jail Free cards.

How much is the fine to get out of Jail if you don't roll doubles or hold a card?

You can also stay and try for doubles on up to three turns before being forced to pay.

What happens if you roll doubles three times in a row?

It is one of three ways in: the others are the Go to Jail corner square and a Chance or Community Chest card.

How many little green buildings and red buildings come in a standard set?

When the houses run out, nobody can build, and savvy players sometimes hoard them to block opponents.

How many houses must sit on a property before you can replace them with a hotel?

Houses must also be built evenly across a colour group, so you cannot pile them all onto Boardwalk.

If a player lands on an unowned property and declines to buy it, what does the official rule say happens?

This auction rule is the most commonly ignored rule in the game, and skipping it makes games run much longer.

If you own both utilities, rent is how many times the dice roll?

With just one utility it is four times the roll, making the Electric Company and Water Works the game's most variable earners.

What is the rent on a railroad if you own all four?

Rent starts at $25 for one and doubles with each additional railroad owned.

What are the two cheapest properties on the American board?

They cost $60 each, and Boardwalk, at the other end, costs $400.

What is the purchase price of Boardwalk?

Its dark-blue partner Park Place costs $350; the London edition's equivalent is Mayfair at £400.

Which company produced the London edition of Monopoly, first sold in 1936?

It was the firm's first board game; Victor Watson's secretary is said to have chosen the London streets on a day trip.

On the London board, which street costs £400, the equivalent of Boardwalk?

Old Kent Road is the London equivalent of Mediterranean Avenue at £60.

It has long been claimed that special wartime Monopoly sets smuggled what to Allied prisoners of war?

The story credits British intelligence and the game's UK licensee, though historians have recently questioned how much of it is documented.

Which economist's single-tax theory was The Landlord's Game designed to demonstrate?

Georgists argued that land value, not labour, should be taxed; Magie's game showed rent flowing to landlords.

How much did the publisher pay The Landlord's Game's inventor for her patent in 1935?

She gave newspaper interviews to assert her authorship, but the company promoted Darrow's story instead.

Under the 'prosperity' rules of The Landlord's Game, what ended the game?

The cooperative rule set was the point of the game for its inventor and the part nobody wanted to play.

Whose 1970s-80s Anti-Monopoly lawsuit brought the game's true history into court records?

The economics professor's research showed the game had circulated among Quakers and academics for decades before Darrow.

Which Quaker teacher is credited with putting the New Jersey resort's street names on the board?

She learned the game at Earlham College in Indiana and made a new board when she moved to the New Jersey resort.

How many sets had the publisher sold by 1974?

The game is now licensed in more than 113 countries and printed in more than 46 languages.

Which optional die was added to all regular Monopoly sets in 2008?

It adds a bus symbol and Mr. Monopoly faces to speed up games that can otherwise run for hours.

Which four squares occupy the corners of the board?

Jail doubles as Just Visiting for players who land there without being sent.

In 2008 the Luxury Tax was raised from $75 to what?

The same edition set Income Tax at a flat $200 and increased the bank's total to $20,580.

How much money did newer US Monopoly editions (September 2008 and later) put in the bank?

Older US editions had $15,140; the total is also the traditional prize for the Monopoly World Championship.

Roughly how much was stolen in the McDonald's Monopoly fraud run by its security chief?

Jerome Jacobson's scheme ran from 1995 to 2000, led to 53 indictments and inspired the HBO series McMillions.

Which toy giant bought Monopoly's original publisher in 1991?

Hasbro has since released hundreds of licensed editions, from cities to films to Here and Now, which swapped in modern properties in 2005.

How many colour groups are the 22 streets divided into?

Two of the groups, the browns and dark blues, have only two streets each; the rest have three.

The Landlord's Game patent drawing is dated to which day?

US patent 748,626 shows a square track with corner squares that already included a jail and a public park.

As of 2015, roughly how many copies of Monopoly were estimated to have been sold worldwide?

The game has been licensed in more than 113 countries and printed in over 46 languages.

According to Hasbro, how long did the longest game of Monopoly ever played last?

Marathon sessions aside, a typical game gets bogged down because trading stalls, which is why the Speed Die was added in 2008.

Which three tokens replaced the thimble, wheelbarrow and boot after the 2017 vote?

The vote offered 64 candidates, and Hasbro later sold a limited Signature Token Collection containing all the losers.

The battleship and cannon tokens were briefly used in which failed 1940 Parker Brothers war game?

When that game flopped, the ready-made metal pieces were recycled into Monopoly sets, and by 1943 there were ten tokens.

Which colour property group did Jim Slater's The Mayfair Set rate as the best to own?

Chance cards such as Go to Jail and Go Back Three Spaces funnel players onto those streets more often than any other group.

Where were the first Monopoly World Championships held in November 1973?

Competitors from outside the United States were not included until 1975, and ESPN has since aired the event.

Sidney Mobell.s 23-carat-gold set, the most expensive ever made, marked which anniversary?

Valued at $2,000,000 with rubies and sapphires on the chimneys, the 1985 set now sits in the Smithsonian Institution.

Which mobile game, released in April 2023, became the most popular mobile game of that year?

Developed by Scopely, it generated more than $2 billion in revenue in its first year.