Educational Toy Money

Educational Toy Money, also published under the titles Bradley's Toy Money, Toy Money, and Bradley's Toy Money Complete with Game of Banking, is a set of play money first produced by the Milton Bradley Company in 1877. It was valued as an educational tool in the United States for several decades, and Milton Bradley continued to publish it until the middle of the twentieth century. Later editions added banking game rules, turning the set into an interactive lesson in financial transactions for two to six players, where children learned to make change and manage money until reaching twenty-five dollars. Original sets included cardboard coins from one cent to twenty dollars and paper bills designed to resemble actual United States currency; when the realistic designs ran afoul of early twentieth-century counterfeiting laws, the company redesigned the currency to clearly mark it as Educational Toy Money. Examples are preserved in the Smithsonian Institution.