Monopoly puts real money in bank

MONOPOLY is celebrating its 80th birthday this year by putting real money into gamers’ boxes – and one box will have the whole €20,580 bank made up of real notes.

Thirty thousand Monopoly boxes go on sale from today with the 80th birthday – 80 ans – sticker on the front and 80 of them will contain special gifts for buyers. There are 69 boxes with €150 inside, 10 with €300 and the last one will have the jackpot.

The winners will not have to pass Go to get their cash and they even get a complete set of Monopoly money so they can play the game properly.

Florence Gaillard, who looks after Monopoly for manufacturer Hasbro, told 20 Minutes: “We were looking for something special for this birthday and found out that the majority of French people playing dreamed of one day finding real money when they opened the box.”

The company commissioned an online survey on players’ dream finds and real money came out on top, with 50.5% of the vote. In second place, 26.4% of players wanted to find cards that gave them hotel holidays.

Monopoly sells 500,000 boxes a year in France and since it was invented in 1935 has sold 275million round the world. The top selling editions are those for New York, Paris, Cairo, Berlin and London.

In France it is still the No1 board game for all ages with special versions sold for 24 towns and cities in different regions. They are: Béziers, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Le Havre, Le Mans, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Mulhouse, Nantes, Nice, Perpignan, Rennes, Rouen, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse, Tours, Bretagne, Corse, Haute-Savoie, Nord, Normandie and Pays-Basque.

It is published in 47 languages and is sold in 114 countries – with an estimated one billion people having played it – and there are 300 different versions worldwide.