MDM celebrates 90 years of Monopoly by bringing its impressive multilayer minting to a ten-ounce silver coin

It’s hard to believe that the ultra-popular board game, Monopoly, has hit its 90th birthday in its current form, itself pre-dated by the inspiration for it, ‘The Landlord’s Game’, created in 1903 by Lizzie Magie. Generations have grown up playing this property-economics game, buying and trading properties and developing them with houses and hotels. It was first published by Parker Brothers in the US, and Waddington’s in the UK, both in 1935.

The game has a huge following, having racked up over 275 million sales across 113 licenced countries, and has been translated into 46 languages. The variety of themed boards has exploded from the original choice of Atlanta and London, and new ones are constantly published top this day. One of the most iconic elements has always been the metal playing tokens, which have often changed over time, although the battleship, race car, and top hat, have been a constant presence since 1935, all under the watchful gaze of the moustachioed ‘Mr Monopoly’, also known as ‘Rich Uncle Pennybags’.

The game has been published by Hasbro since 1991, and German producer, MDM Wholesale, own the licence to produce coins for their properties, having already released coins for some like Magic the Gathering, and Transformers, as well as Monopoly. Their latest is something else, however, utilising MDM’s multi-layer technique to create exaggerated depth. They’ve used this technique several times before, including for Harry Potter, and some more factual themes, to great effect. These ten-ounce coins have a deep concave centre, as well as parts that are actually higher than the main border. It’s all very impressive.

Here, Mr Monopoly stands at the high-point, and the concave space is filled with a mix of the spaces found on a Monopoly board, all arranged around the game’s money symbol. Placed in that space are a pair of resin dice. The four corner squares on the board are located at the compass points of the coin, and the border is decorated with little glyphs of the many playing tokens that have been a part of the game over those 90 years. It’s a fantastic homage to a much-loved cultural icon.

By contrast, the obverse is very basic, depicting the shield of the issuing nation, Samoa. We haven’t seen the packaging yet, but others of this type have been very nicely presented, and we’d expect nothing less here. Only 250 of these will be struck, and we can imagine fans of the game will find it extraordinarily appealing. Available to order now.

DENOMINATIONCOMPOSITIONDIMENSIONFINISHMINTAGE
$10 (Samoa)311.0 g of 0.999 silver70.0 mmAntique250