The new San Jose City Edition of Monopoly, released November 2023 by educational card and board games maker Top Trumps USA, Inc., was swept up in multiples by avid San Jose residents and fans even before it appeared on the company’s City Monopoly Editions website page.
Available for prices ranging from $44.99 to $39.95 on Amazon and at CVS, Walmart and other retailers, the custom edition includes landmark locations and local businesses that highlight the most beloved—or beleaguered by some—features of California’s third-largest city.
Among the two locations that give nod to their long histories are Winchester Mystery House, which captured the brass ring with a position on the game board where Boardwalk usually is; and Original Joe’s prominently replacing the Park Place spot.
The city’s Valley Transportation Authority took four railroad slots and in response, wrapped an entire city bus in brilliant, eye-opening blue, adorned with text promoting the game.
Peters’ Bakery’s Burnt Almond Cake is the VTA’s next door neighbor on the board and anchors the position to the left of the San Jose History Walk. To celebrate and fuel the enthusiasm, the bakery had enormous stacks of the game available for preorder, all of which sold out even before the launch. No doubt, there was and will continue to be plenty of the shop’s iconic cake on sale for eating and ordering extras to take home.
San Jose native Hilda Ramirez in a television interview with NBC Bay Area said she had purchased five games and would be ordering more. “I couldn’t be more proud and more excited,” she said. “I bought five today and I’m gonna come back and order a whole lot more. This is going to be the hottest Christmas gift in the Bay Area.”
Other sites on the game include areas inside the city limits, such as San Jose State University, Pedro Square, the Municipal Rose Garden, Children’s Discovery Museum, San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose Civic Auditorium, Tech Interactive, the California Theatre, Christmas in the Park, Alum Rock Park, Coyote Valley and the Japanese Friendship Garden. The board takes license to extend beyond the city limits with Natural Bridges State Beach, Santa Cruz Beach, and Año Nuevo State Park.
At the kickoff event held at Winchester Mystery House, Mayor Matt Mahan said, “San Jose has so much history, so much to be proud of, so much to celebrate, and this is just one more great opportunity to do that. I know we’re all very excited to see many of our local landmarks and local history and culture be memorialized on this game board for generations to come.”
Top Trump spent more than a year designing the San Jose edition and credits community input with many of the locations selected. Perhaps the most unusual is the choice to include $15 Sewer and Drain, a San Jose company founded in 1983, which fills the utility spaces.
Sites overlooked or not selected for reasons unknown range from the Richard Meier-designed San Jose City Hall to the Sharks and SAP Center to the many tech companies headquartered in San Jose or Silicon Valley such as Google, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Adobe, Zoom, Cisco and eBay.
The game company has created other California editions, although none of a city as large as San Jose. There are editions for Santa Barbara, Huntington Beach, Lake Tahoe, Sacramento, Palm Springs and Napa Valley.
For San Jose Monopoly seekers who come up short-handed or waiting for orders to arrive due to the rapid sales, temporary solace might come with one or all of these substitutes.
But for the real deal, patience, persistence—and slices of Burnt Almond Cake to tide them over during the tedious wait and fuel the anticipation—will result in a win: the arrival of their very own, custom designed, San Jose Monopoly Board Game.
Now, the only things missing in their San Jose City Edition Monopoly lineup (hear this Top Trump) are Spanish and other language versions that reflect the city’s diverse, multilingual population.
