High Society (card game)

High Society is an auction card game designed by Reiner Knizia and first published by Ravensburger in 1995, later reprinted by publishers including Uberplay, Amigo Spiele, University Games, Eagle-Gryphon Games, and Osprey Games. Each of the three to five players starts with eleven numbered money cards, functioning as cheques ranging in value, which are spent across a series of open auctions for a shared deck of sixteen item cards. Ten of those cards are desirable status items worth points, three are Promotion to Peerage cards that double the value of whatever a player collects, and three are undesirable cards, Gambling Debt, Theft, and Scandal, that subtract from a player's score. Most items are sold in a standard rising auction where the highest bidder wins the item and loses the cheques bid, but for the undesirable cards the auction runs in reverse: the first player to pass wins the item, meaning they escape it, while every other player forfeits the cheques they had committed. The game ends as soon as the fourth red-bordered card of the deck appears, at which point whoever has spent the least money is eliminated outright regardless of their collection, and among the rest the player whose remaining items are worth the most points wins.