(Photo: Images Money)
You can’t buy anything outside of the game with Monopoly money, but that may change in the near future. For the 80th anniversary of that game in France, Hasbro is selling a special set that will contain real money: €20,580 ($23,513 USD). A few other sets will contain smaller amounts of legal tender in addition to the fake money that players use during gameplay. They will be placed at random in ordinary boxed sets of the game. The Guardian describes how carefully Hasbro is working to ensure that no one can find the money sets intentionally:
The operation to switch the notes was carried out in deadly secret, in the small eastern town of Creutzwald, where the games are packed up before being shipped throughout France.
“First of all, it wasn’t easy to get the notes. They had to be escorted discreetly,” explained Gaillard.
Appropriately for a game where players try to cruelly bankrupt their opponents, Monopoly even roped in a bailiff to count and re-count the real notes.
“When they asked me, I was giddy as a child,” said the bailiff in question, Patrice Wimmer, an aficionado of the game.
However, they discovered a problem: the sets with the real notes expanded the box ever so slightly, making the packaging out of kilter - a tell-tale sign.
As for the weight, there was no discernable difference between the real notes and the fake money.
“The difference is marginal, unless you turn up at the shop with precision scales,” said Wimmer.
-via Nerd Approved