Do you love playing board games? Monopoly and Life were two of my favorites growing up.
So I recently went down to the Museum of American Finance to check out Sidney Mobell’s $2 million, gold-plated Monopoly game. The game, on loan from the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, weighs 32 pounds and is covered with 165 gemstones. The cards are 23-karat gold-plated, and the tokens and dice are solid 18-karat gold.
Sidney Mobell is an 84-year-old jeweler and the designer of the gold-plated Monopoly. He has owned a San Francisco jewelry store for more than 30 years, and he has created other outlandish pieces, such as a 14-karat gold-and-diamond mousetrap and a diamond filled hourglass necklace!
His ideas are boundless. When asked how he comes up with his priceless concepts, he says, “Who knows…I think of something as I go to sleep, and write it down before I forget.”
His imagination is both whimsical and inspiring!
