Tag Archives: Competition or Department Store

The Possible Origins of The Landlord’s Game

Leave a reply

Note: I wrote this as an introduction to The Card Game of the Monopolist, which is my attempt to retrofit Elizabeth Magie‘s 1906 version of The Landlord’s Game back to what I consider it’s possible original form as a card game:

The game you have before you is my attempt to answer the question, “What was the origin of The Landlord’s Game?”

One notable feature of Landlord’s is the innovative use of the game board.  Previously, such games generally had a starting and ending point, while in Elizabeth Magie’s game, the action goes around and around.

There were many financial games in the 1890s, and very popular ones to boot, but they were all card games.  That Elizabeth Magie was familiar with such games, there can be no doubt.  They were all the rage.  But how are they connected to The Landlord’s Game?

Over her career as a game inventor, Elizabeth Magie developed other games.  Some of these were card games, including Competition or Department Store, Mock Trial, and an unpublished educational game she patented in the 1920s.

My own research into game history led me to postulate, several years ago, that The Landlord’s Game, and hence its more well-known descendant Monopoly, rather than being board games with cards, ought more properly to be considered card games, where the board makes for easier play.

Collecting groups of cards so they will have greater value is a feature of many card games, whether they be suits or otherwise.  In Landlord’s and Monopoly, the players collect groups of property cards in order to obtain a higher rental payment from the other players.

While there is at present a gap in the historical record to prove the point one way or another, I decided to test my theory, and see just what changes would need to be made in The Landlord’s Game to make it into a card game.

The answer is, surprisingly little.  Consider that the various squares on the game board are like cards.  If you turn them into cards, and in this case, I am calling them Game Play cards, you can eliminate not only the game board, but also the dice and tokens.

Dice were a problematic feature of games in this period, as they were considered instruments of gambling.  If Landlord’s had a pre-history as a card game, dice were not necessary, as the deck of Game Play cards could be shuffled periodically.

For this exercise, I have adapted the rules for the 1906 commercialized version of The Landlord’s Game, making only the required changes, with play money on card stock instead of poker chips, as in actual practice chips can be confusing.

We hope you will enjoy our attempt to show “what might have been.”

-David Sadowski

RARE 1904 Elizabeth Magie Card Game Competition or Department Store

9 Replies

P1060809

FYI, we are auctioning off a very rare, collectible game on eBay (listing here):

This auction is for the RARE 1904 card game Competition, or Department Store in used but nearly complete condition.

This game has been attributed to Elizabeth Magie by the George Glazer Gallery of New York, sellers of antiquarian globes, maps and prints in New York City.  This would make it her first published game, predating the first commercial version of The Landlord’s Game by two years.

The Landlord’s Game was invented and patented by Lizzie J. Magie (also known as Elizabeth Magie Phillips), a follower of economist Henry George (1839-1897), popularizer of the “Single Tax.”  Her intention was to use her game to keep Henry George’s ideas alive after his death.  His most famous work was the book Progress and Poverty.

This game is of great historical importance, since it is quite possible that The Landlord’s Game was first developed as a card game before it acquired a board.  Thematically, Competition or Department Store is a precursor of her later game Bargain Day (published by Parker Brothers in 1937), which also had a department store shopping theme.

We do know that Elizabeth Magie invented other card games besides this.  In 1910, Parker Brothers published her game Mock Trial, and her final patent, issued in the mod-1920s, was for an educational card game.  This auction also includes an extremely rare Parker Brothers advertising flyer from 1910 that promotes Mock Trial (pictured).

This game includes:

1 box

106 cards (should be 107, plus one card that should be glued to the outside of the box)

59 White Discs (should be 100)

17 Red Discs (should be 25)

We will include high quality reproductions of the two missing cards, plus a copy of the game rules.*  The red and white paper discs should be quite easy to supplement, meaning you can actually play this game just as people did 112 years ago.

I do not know of ANY early Monopoly game collector who has even a partial version of this extremely rare game.  This is only the second example I have seen in over 10 years of collecting.  Even the Strong Museum of American Play in Rochester, NY has only a partial set with a lot fewer pieces than this one.

The discs represent play money that makes up a Bank.  Each player becomes their own store, and receives an inventory card plus several letter cards.  These are arranged to form words that represent inventory stock.  There are cards for Checks, a Fire Sale, a Bargain Sale, Bills, a Financial Panic, a Cyclone and a Fire.  There are also cards for Fire Insurance.

The winner is the first player to collect $50.

*Her name is misspelled as “Magee” on the rules.

P1060801

P1060802

P1060803

P1060804

P1060805

P1060806

P1060807

P1060808

P1060810

P1060811

P1060812

Screen Shot 05-15-16 at 10.16 PM.PNG

The Card Game of The Monopolist

Leave a reply

P1060528

The Card Game of the Monopolist
New From Folkopoly Press

I have written before how, in my humble opinion, what we know today as the game Monopoly had it’s origins as a card game. I think it is more useful to think of it as a card game that developed the need for a board, rather than a board game that developed a need for cards.

The original inspiration for Lizzie J. Magie to create The Landlord’s Game was the death of radical economist Henry George in 1897. She hoped to keep his ideas alive with this game.

It also had inspiration in the various financial card games of the 1890s, which were hugely popular. Some of these games were quite complex and sophisticated and included things such as play money and involved financial trading. The various property groups in Monopoly, in this view represent “suits” as in a card game.

Besides inventing The Landlord’s Game, precursor of the game Monopoly, Lizzie Magie also created other card games in the early 1900s, including Competition, or Department Store (sold by the Flinch Card Game Co.) and Mock Trial, the first game she sold to Parker Brothers.

So, I think it is reasonable to conclude that before she came up with the board game version of The Landlord’s Game, there was a card game version that preceded it. As we know, Landlord’s was very much different than the other board games of the era, having little in common even with something like the 1878 Game of the Monopolist.

Unfortunately, if such a card game version of Landlord’s actually existed, it has not been documented in the historical record to date.

I decided a few years ago to reverse-engineer this earlier card game version of Landlord’s that I think must have existed. Recently, I made a conceptual breakthrough and have now finished making just such a game.

It has been my goal to make the minimum amount of changes necessary, using the 1906 Landlord’s Game as a starting point.

Since Landlord’s is now a registered trademark*, and this new game is merely my interpretation of what it could have been like, if it existed, I have given it a different name. Under the circumstances, The Card Game of the Monopolist will do just fine.

I am now ready to offer The Card Game of the Monopolist, a late 1890s version of what we know today as The Landlord’s Game and Monopoly, for just $39.95. This price includes shipping within the United States.

Most of the cards in this game are identical to the ones in my new game Progress and Poverty, which is based on the 1906 Landlord’s. The rules are an adaptation of those rules, with only those changes that are necessary to play the game using only cards and no board.

The conceptual breakthrough I had was that each square on the game board is, in itself, rather like a card. So, carrying over all the existing cards from the game, which include the deeds, Chance, and Luxury cards, plus the play money, we now have a deck of Game Play cards that each represent a square on the board. The Game Play cards are a different stack than the deeds.

At the start of the game, the Game Play cards are shuffled, and the used cards are put into a discard pile. Each player takes their turn around the table, one at a time, and as various properties come up, that player has the opportunity to purchase a deed from the Bank, at auction or otherwise. If a Chance card comes up, the player draws a card from that deck.

Once the entire deck of Game Play cards has been gone through once, the deck is reshuffled and used again. Each time a round is completed, the players collect their wages from the Bank, as they would when passing Mother Earth or Go on a game board.

Games can go on for a set number of rounds, using a time limit, or when the Bank runs out of money. The various players then total up the value of their cards (including the Luxury cards) and the one with the highest value is the winner.

The game can still accommodate the “Georgist” rules of play in just the same manner as Landlord’s does.

The original 1906 Landlord’s was designed as a game that could be played by 2, 3, or 4 players. This too seems derived from its original status as a card game. There are four sides to a card table. As I have mentioned, the property groups are like suits, and their value increases once you have a complete group and can make “improvements” (i.e., put houses on them). The way that Luxury cards are collected throughout also harkens back to other card games.

Using a deck of Game Play cards introduces a random element into the game, making the use of dice unnecessary. In this version of the game, tokens are not needed either.

While I don’t know for certain whether such a card game actually preceded the board game we know and love, it fits the facts and I think of it as the simplest, most elegant solution to determining the pre-history of Monopoly.

Each game comes with:

1 Implements box, 1 set of Rules, 80 Houses, 16 Education cards, 2 Free College cards, 16 Chance cards, 27 Luxury Cards, 29 Deeds (the usual 28 as in later Monopoly games, plus “Speculation”), 4 Natural Opportunity cards, and 41 Game Play cards, plus Scrip Money in the following amounts:

54x $1

54x $5

81x $10

54x $50

81x $100

A total of $11,934.

-Clarence B. Darwin

The Card Game of the Monopolist
Price: $49.99

PS- For shipping outside the US, drop us a line at:
folkopolypress@gmail.com

Thanks.

P1060530

P1060529

P1060527

P1060526

P1060525

*The Landlord’s Game is a registered trademark owned by Thomas Forsyth. Folkopoly Press is not affiliated with Thomas Forsyth,