Monopoly money
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     23 June 2009
Monopoly, the board game invented by Charles B Darrow in 1933 gave the inventor a licence to print money. Parker Brothers purchased the rights a couple of years later, and the toy manufacturer now prints about $50 billion in Monopoly money every year, compared to the £70 billion or so real cash printed by the US Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

Parker Brothers claims to have sold 200 million Monopoly sets during the game’s 70-year history. On the basis that each US version contains $15,140, this implies a total print run of more than three trillion dollars.