Marvin Gardens rather than Marven Gardens) from his friend’s homemade version of The Landlord’s Game, so it is kind of obvious that he was directly copying the other game. He drew the earliest versions of Monopoly by hand on oilcloth before contacting a printer who put his designs onto a square board.Ĭharles Darrow managed to copy across some misspellings (eg. He asked his friends for a copy of the rules and gameboard and used these as the basis for his new game. The first Monopoly gamesĬharles Darrow began making his Monopoly game having seen a similar game at a friend’s house – an Atlantic City version of Lizzie Magie’s The Landlord’s Game. The Parker Brothers game was an instant success selling 278,000 copies in its first year of release, whilst the following year sales soared to 1.75 million copies (it was only available in the USA at that time). In 1935 he agreed on a deal with Parker Brothers to produce the game at scale and it’s now one of the top-selling board games in the world. He made the first sets by hand with the help of his wife and son. Who made Monopoly first?Ĭharles Darrow was the first person to make and sell the game of Monopoly. In fact, many editions of the game even came with a heartwarming story that told of how he invented the game whilst penniless and went on to earn his fortune from the game!Ĭharles Darrow is certainly an important figure in the history of Monopoly but it definitely seems unfair that the role of Lizzie Magie has been sidelined and was almost airbrushed from history completely. It was Darrow that took the game of Monopoly to Parker Brothers and it was his version that went on to sell millions of copies. Charles Darrow Photo: BullsandBears, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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