Monopoly Money "fact"?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve seen this little “fact” in several junk emails, and recently on the coasters of my local Red Robin restaurant chain. It goes like this:

“Every day more money is printed for the game ‘Monopoly’ than is printed by the U.S. Treasury.”

Of course, the emails that contain this fact are littered with so many inaccuracies that I cannot rebut simply for lack of time and energy.

The Monopoly fact just seems so wrong, and yet I can’t find the evidence. Then again, is it true?

I’ve been to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and they’ve got an operation that should put Hasbro to shame. Though they aren’t exactly cranking out $500 bills, I would still think they would have the edge. How many Monopoly games are made every day, anyway?

Does anyone here have any insight…or preferably hard numbers to put this to rest either way?

2

Welcome to the boards PoorYorrick
Monopoly
According to the offical Monopoly Web Site, Parker Brothers prints $50 billion in Monopoly money each year.

U.S. Government
According to the [FAQ page of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing](http://www.treas.gov/opc/opc0034.html#currency printing), the U.S. Government produces 22.5 million currency notes per day. That amounts to (assuming 250 work days/year) 5,625,000,000 a year. Unfortunately, they don’t give a breakdown as to the denominations, but I’d be willing to bet that most are probably $1 bills, as they need to be replaced most often.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with a more definitive answer, but at least it’s a start in the right direction.

Zev Steinhardt

3

Poking around the US Treasury site a bit more, I found the Fun Facts page, which says that 37 million notes a day are produced, with a face value of approximately $696 million. Going by Zev’s estimate of 250 working days/year gives us $174 billion printed in a year.

Nope, this ain’t Monopoly money.

4

Allow me to pick up the ball from there. Let’s give the singles the benefit of the doubt and say that 60% of the notes are ones, 10% are fives, 10% are tens, 15% are twenties, 3% are fifties, 2% are Franklins.

::Puts on spiffy accountant style leather visor:

Ones: 3,375,000,000 notes × $1 = $3,375,000,000
Fives: 562,500,000 notes × $5 = $2,812,500,000
Tens: 562,500,000 notes × $10 = $5,625,000,000
Twenties: 843,750,000 notes × $20 = $16,875,000,000
Fifties: 168,750,000 notes × $50 = $8,437,500,000
Hundreds: 112,500,000 notes × $100 = $11,250,000,000

Grand total… Cha-Ching!!

$$48,375,000,000

5

Well which is it, guys. 37 million notes a day or 22.5 million? At least the fun facts page shows that I was too high on my estimate of ones. Looks like only 45% of the notes are ones, which will throw my previous bottom line to well over $50B.

6

Attrayant, you are also probably low on the fraction of twenties and high on the fraction of tens. I would say at least three times as many twenties as tens. And more fives than tens, too.

7

Production Figures for FY 1980-2000. FY2000 seems a bit odd because no $100 or $50 bills were printed. If we go by FY1999:


$ 1  3,539,200,000
$ 2            N/A
$ 5    832,000,000
$ 10   614,400,000
$ 20 4,134,400,000
$ 50   694,400,000
$100 1,542,400,000

we get $285,491,200,000. Someone with more patience than I can compute the figures for other years.

Still ain’t Monopoly money.

8

So I think it’s safe to say that Monopoly is pretty much blown out of the water, right? I always thought it was a ridiculous claim that there was more Monopoly money printed, and I guess I was right.

Still, I’m amazed I haven’t seen this debunked more thoroughly before. I’ve been hearing this for a long time now, and the “official” Monopoly site is even perpetuating it? There doesn’t appear to be any validity to it at all. Here’s the quote from the official site posted by zev:

Parker Brothers prints about 50 billion dollars worth of MONOPOLY money in one year.

Ever wonder how much MONOPOLY money comes with a standard set? The total is $15,140.

Each year, the makers of MONOPOLY produce more than twice as much play money as the U.S. Mint does actual money.

Twice as much?? I don’t think they could even claim to produce a greater net amount (taking into account retired US bills being replaced by new ones).

I’m kind of surprised Snopes hasn’t jumped on this one…but I’m certainly not surprised that the answer could be found here.

9

But here’s the part that always bothered me, and I’m sure I Knew Him, Horratio(sic) was alluding to this as well:

If Parker Brothers prints $50,000,000,000 in a year, and puts $15,140 in each game, than they must make … 3,236,245.95, rounded up, call it 3,236,250, games in a year.

Does just over 3.2 Monopoly games made per year sound right to you folks?

(I imagine they sell packs of Monopoly money too, as replacements, or what have you … but that’s still a lot of games!)

10

I can believe that there are 3 million monopoly games sold per year world-wide. My kids go thru one ever 3 years or so. They aren’t very good at keeping it all together.

I just e-mailed Hasboro and told them that the BEP has been outproducing them since at least 1991. I left them an “out”–their site claims that they produce more than twice the money that the US Mint does. I told them that the US Mint produces coins and they certainly produce more. But NOT more than the BEP.

11

The US Mint produces coins and is a different entity from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which prints currency bills. According to US Mint website, it produces 14-20 billion circulating coins a year, so the factoid is technically correct.

12

samclem was a bit faster on the draw than I was.

13

It would seem easy enough for the Monopoly folks to make their claim true - just print up a few $100,000,000 bills as novelty items.

Using this technique, I can produce more “lucwarm bucks” in 10 minutes than the U.S. Mint can produce in 10 years.

14

Wow…I just didn’t think of that distinction between the Mint and the BEP, but that makes sense. I just got the idea of bills stuck in my head…

Still, seeing that, I guess I can let the official Monopoly site off the hook, but other offenders still exist. I’m pretty sure that the “fact” quoted in the original post is the way it’s usually stated. It talks about the US Treasury, or the US Goverment, or something to the effect that it’s comparing Monopoly to all the money printed in the US. I don’t recall seeing the “US Mint” distinction before.

I even ran across a site that said this:

More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money printed throughout the world.

I know I cringed when I read that. (It’s usually quoted along with the assertion that Coke was originally green, and other interesting tidbits that have been been debunked by Cecil and others…)

15

Eevn if technically correct, it’s a pretty lame dodge by Parker Brothers to say they produce more money than the Mint does. If the Mint produces no paper money, and Monopoly contains no coinage, how can they even be compared?

It’s like saying that I product more things with my fingerprints on them than NASA has in all of it’s history. Which is all fine and dandy, except NASA isn’t in the business of producing things with my fingerprints on them. It’s a meaningless comparison. I don’t see the Mint saying that they produce an infinite amount more coins than Monopoly contains, each and every year.