Ok, just to show how nerdy I am for Monopoly.
A picture of my little wall of Monopoly. Well, and a couple of baseball cards. On the left side you can see a car tin, Disney, a couple of "Library" editions (in boxes), a couple from the 70's, 1957 ed. (has train artwork on the front), Canada (doesn't have the beaver, dammit), 40th anniversary, deluxe from the 60's (brown boxes), 40th anny Italian (eBay from a Catholic girls school, oddly enough). On the right we have Irish, Dutch (Kalverstraat Amsterdam!), British, Japanese (a disappointment, basically American with subtitles), 70's Bayern/Munich, Quebec, Swedish (?), Michael Graves, a couple small box editions from the early 50's, a large box version from the 50's (inner contents still in shrink wrap!), Arizona, Russia, The Simpsons, and a couple of other 60s/70s US versions. Oh, in the middle are small Italian and German versions, also the "nostalgia" wood box available at Target (glare). On top of these are a couple from the 30's and 40's.
View from the right side of the shelf...a modern Munich city version (Winning Moves), America, standard modern edition, Euro (European Union - upside down), Stuutgart, Berlin, two deluxe German versions from the 70's (all of those German ones came from a
fantastic eBayer from Germany. Foreign versions of eBay are good to check to find vintage foreign editions. I won two auctions, but arranged to buy the others and they came in one big shipment).
A picture comparing some of the modern components with some very early ones. The deed cards show a different style and also the fact that some rare deeds originally were made without printing on the back. Also, there were versions that had smaller money, and the money was colored differently in some cases, like the 50s (greyish) and the 100s (originally salmon colored). They've redesigned the modern money even from the versions from the 90's (80s?), and the cards and deeds are a lot flimsier. Not wild about these changes.
Oh, the boards are a lot thinner and lighter too now, and of course they fold over twice rather than just once. This board is from the set from the 50's mentioned above. Should have taken a picture of the inside and of the box, but my digital camera can't take more than a few pictures w/o complaining about batteries. Anyway, there's an insert for "Famous Parker Games" including Sorry, Clue, Careers, Wild World, Camelot, Rich Uncle, Touring, Rook, Pit, Flinch, The Reporter, Winnie the Pooh, The Children's Hour, Pollyanna, and "Going to Jerusalem" (most popular Bible game ever published, apparently). The board is black, and has a sticker on the back cover in the style of the box. They used to do this, stopped in the early 70's. The tokens are wooden and the dice are quite small - these were changes made during WWII that stuck around for a while.
The tokens. The hat on the left is current, the two to the right are from the 30's. The originals are taller and more curved, and you can't see it in the pic but they had small circular holes at the end of one brim. You can see how they were pressed together. Also the new style vs old style car - the old style had an open seat (a hole), was taller and had more definition on the wheels. In the background are the rocking horse (pretty rare), lantern, a couple of the handbags, a ship, cannon, shoe, and thimble. Old thimbles bore the inscription "For a good girl". No wheelbarrow, no dog, no rider. Oh, there was an iron, but the one from this group was broken. The cannon is a different style from today; the cannon was phased out and came back, as was the ship. There certainly was no pot of gold token.