Unofficial Versions - Misc.
The Original Opoly Game |
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Information |
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Year:Publisher:Dimensions of the box: |
1999Restitution, Inc. USA / Discovery Publications (International) Ltd.26.8 x 52.0 cm |
"The Original Atlantic City Folkgame upon which Monopoly was directly based"This is what I will call the Great Britain issue of the game of the American inventor Ralph Anspach. On the lid it is said that "It is obviously not produced by our competitors Waddington and Winning Moves, the producers of Monopoly® game equipment". Furthermore it is also stated that this game is "Produced by the detectives who cracked a swindle and uncovered this suppressed game." What is the case?As Prof. Ralph Anspach developed the Anti-Monopoly game for his students in the early seventies he was forced to go into history and so he discovered that since the start of the twentiest century monopoly-like games were made at home as Folkgames. From that commercial games like Finance and Easy Money originated in the thirties. Out of the monopoly game of the city of Atlantic City - New Jersey that was developped by a group of Quakers, finally the nowadays well known game Monopoly arose. The inventors in Atlantic City played on oil cloth boards, reason why this set, issued in their memory, contains such a kind of an oil cloth with the Atlantic City streets. The purpose of the "solid board without street names" is to make your own game, like the Folkgamers did. To that purpose also neutral property deeds are supplied. The beige houses and yellow hotels are roughly sawed and crude, like the Folksgamers used to do! Again in memory of the inventor, the Quaker Jesse Raiford, the beautifully balanced prices of the properties are pre-printed on the neutral title cards. There are no playing pieces provided because the Quakers did not buy playing pieces for their game. Instead, each player chose a personal item to function as playing piece, such as a ring, a thimble, a penny, a button, a cuff link, a toy car, a toy soldier and so on. All printed matter suggest to be typed on an old fashioned typewriter. The simple banknotes are made of colored paper and the denominations are: $1 - $5 - $10 - $20 - $50 - $100 and $500. The Chance cards are blue and the Community Chest cards are yellow. The texts of these cards differ importantly of those we know so well. For example:
The names of the properties of this Original "oil cloth set" sometimes differ from the Monopoly game board the Americans play with today. Also, the colours are different.
The Rules are those of "The fascinating game of Finance - An Easy Game for Everybody", which were originally copyrighted by Electronic Laboratories, Inc. in 1932. A second annex explains how one can make his own "Original monopoly" game, at which Ralph Anspach goes into the word monopoly and the Sherman Antitrust Law of 1890. |