Masterpiece is a board game from Parker Brothers, now a Hasbro brand, in which players take part in auctions for famous works of art. Players bid on potentially valuable paintings, negotiate trades with one another, build a portfolio, amass money and try to win. The game relies on bluffing because players hold asymmetrical information: some paintings are secretly forgeries with a real value of zero, yet they can still be resold to other players or to the bank with the value hidden. Getting the full value of a painting also takes some luck in landing on the right square to sell to the bank. The original design came from Christian Thee, who pitched it to Parker Brothers in 1969; the company declined it and issued its own similar game in 1970, credited to Jeffrey Breslow, and Thee later won a lawsuit. It was republished in 1976 and 1996 and is now out of print.
Facts
Sport
Game Type (category) Classification
Player CountSmall Group (3-6 Players) 1 Sources
1. Noble Knight Games: Masterpiece - The Classic Art Auction Game (1970 Edition)
Noble Knight GamesPlayers fieldQuote, Players field
3 - 6 Players
2. Masterpiece (game) (Wikipedia)
Lead sentence
Masterpiece is a board game by Parker Brothers
Lead, second paragraph
originally published in 1970 by Parker Brothers
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