Subject: Gold-and-Diamond Monopoly game board
Maker: Sidney Mobell - San Francisco - USA - 1988

Except for the few pictures I found in the past on the internet site from the American company  FAO Schwarz as well as from the German Die Ideenfabrik Gudenkauf I couldn't get more details about this set.
December 2010 I found the apparently newly created site: http://www.thesidneymobell.com/index.html.


However I found a short description about the maker, published in the SouthCoastToday.com of March 22-1996, reporting:

"A jeweler to the rich and famous is going to focus on that precious gem - time for him and his wife. 
Sidney Mobell, who has created dazzling, irreverent pieces for the likes of Queen Elizabeth II and Donald Trump, has sold his business to Shreve & Co - San Fransisco. 
For 30 years, the 69-year-old Mr. Mobell has held court in his shop, most recently at the Fairmont Hotel. His creations landed him on "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" and "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" several times. But he's getting out of the day-to-day business so he can spend more time with his wife, Ronni, who recovered recently from lung cancer. 
Mr. Mobell's 32-year-old daughter, Marci, died last year. And Mr. Mobell himself went through brain surgery three years ago. "There were these little warnings, so I thought maybe it's about time to go a little easy on myself," Mr. Mobell said. 
Some of his favorite pieces: A $2 million gold-and-diamond Monopoly set for Parker Brothers and a gold baseball for San Francisco Giants owner Peter Magowan." 

Steven Pyatt - UK (personal security agent, actor) approched me in May 2006 with following interesting information:

"When Mr. Mobell first constructed this London Edition of the Monopoly set by commission of Parker Brothers it was for the 60th anniversary (1995) of the Monopoly board game and the intent was to sell the board after a weeks publicity on the worlds media at a charity auction.
The board was valued at $2,000,000 purely on the value of the precious metals and jewels involved in the construction. In the end it didn't meet the reserve.
As well as a diamond studded die the set featured emeralds on the houses (chimney) and rubies on the hotels. The property cards were solid gold plate and the pieces also solid 18 carat gold as was all the gold in the construction.
The art value of the board was of course priceless but the basic insurance value was $2,000,000.
Mr. Mobell hired the best security available at the time and his personal security agent followed him and the board everywhere never taking his eyes off either of his clients.
The week concluded with a celebrity Monopoly party at the Park Lane Hotel in London (I take it the Mayfair was booked) where many famous people attended and Martin Kemp relaunched his career by singing "Gold" one more time for the assembled guests.
It is now living at the Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., see: www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/mobell/monopoly.htm"

Subject:: Lifesized Monopoly tokens - Your Move
Place: Philadelphia - USA -1996
Artists: Daniel Martinez, Renee Petropoulis and Roger White
Web site: www.thebiggamehunter.com/gallery/philadelphia

Penny Melling & Bruce Whitehill frolic in Philadelphia's Municipal Services Building Plaza along the John F. Kennedy Boulevard between 15^th and Broad Streets, where lifesized Monopoly tokens and other game pieces abound.
See for more pictures of these tokens taken by Bruce Whitehill his above mentioned site.

Your Move is a collaborative work by Daniel Martinez, Renee Petropoulis and Roger White consisting for the most part of over-sized Monopoly, chess, domino, and other board game pieces (bolted down to prevent over-eager game players casting them into traffic). 

Subject: Painting "The Monoply-players"©
               (click on picture for a picture of 1828x1188 pixels)

In the Dutch newspaper Het Parool of Thursday, December 17, 1998 was the article "Euro makes holy houses and hotels tumble - An improved Monopoly game", by Hans van Maanen. (See his own site: http://www.vanmaanen.org/hans/artikelen/monopoly.html). This article showed a large picture of "The Monopoly-players", a picture that clearly goes to show that monopoly was already played in the 16th century. So that asked for closer investigation and this is the story:

The leading players are some young Italian painter called Caravaggio (1573 - 1610) and the present-days Dutch artist Joost Veerkamp.
Initially Veerkamp made parodies and changes on famous paintings, of which finally the designs of his stamps arose. So the stamp with "The Monopoly-players" arose from the painting "Supper at Emmaus", where Jesus blesses supper for his disciples. The second stamp of the small series of two was made after the painting "The Potato Eaters" by Vincent van Gogh.
Since 1988 Veerkamp yearly issues a number of "stamps", who can be collected in a loose-leaf album. These albums are still available with:

More about Caravaggio in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio
and about Vincent van Gogh in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Subject: Three Hotels on Broadway Boogie-Woogie-1949
Artist: Mark Caywood - USA - 2001
Dimensions of the painting: 56" x 46" = 1.42 x 1.17 m

Mark Caywood - Fort Worth, TEXAS, USA---is obviously a great artist with an incredible sense of humor. He started his satiric web-site, Caywood's Art Gallery, in 2001, and gave it the subtitle "Art for International Museums, Collectors, Galleries and Dealers". Amongst the great number of different subjects he denounces is the oil on canvas painting by Piet Mondriaan, inspired by Monopoly, which he describes as follows (see: http://home.earthlink.net/~fwbull/sale_11.html):

"This piece, part of a series Mondrian painted to honor America's favorite board game, was lost for many years. In the early 1960s, a janitor found it while cleaning out a storage closet in The Playboy Club, which had taken over the space previously occupied by Mondrian's studio.
In this colorful composition, the artist appears to be making a comment on the pivotal aspect of American corporate economic strength, ie."Monopoly", while at the same time, his innovative placement of various street names and sales prices implies a profound indictment of urban exploitation perpetrated against the poor."

Subject: Graffopoly
Artists: Unknown graffiti-sprayers - New York - 2001
Dimensions of the artwork: abt. 5 x 25 m

This spot is known as the so called "Harlem Graffiti Hall of Fame".
The wall is an innerwall of a school complex in Manhattan, the Harlem district, on the Park Avenue and 106th Street. The artworks of this "Hall" are yearly over-painted in the scope of a graffiti event, so meanwhile Graffopoly does not exist anymore. A pitty!

Subject: Monopoly Haagsche Bluf - wall painting in The Hague - NL
Artist: Carl Palm - Den Haag - May 2002
URL: www.carlpalm.nl
Dimensions of the board: 4 x 4 m

There is a modern kind of almshouse in the centre of The Hague - Holland, called Haagsche Bluf. This shopping mall is owned by the real estate developer "Geste" in The Hague, who practised a beautiful combination of modern style and old façades in order to give an international character to these streets.

The owner of the Haagsche Lounge restaurant (www.haagschelounge.nl) together with the artist came with the splendid idea to embellish a plain wall next to his terrace with a blown up Monopoly game board naturally with the real estates of the "Geste"group, because "Geste" does own more streets and a number of properties around the Haagsche Bluf area. It is obvious that Monopoly came in mind  because it is a matter of buying and selling, money and power. Also on this game board the sequence of the streets is such that the "cheap"streets are in at the start of the game and the "expensive" streets at the end. The choice was (most probably unintentionally) made for the Parker/Hasbro design, i.e. with the black engines on the station spaces, the blue treasure chest and the gold ring on Super Tax. From Start on the spaces are:

Achterom - Algemeen Fonds - Gortstraat - Inkomstenbelasting - Station Zuid - Nieuwstraat - Kans - Raamstraat - Wagenstraat - Slechts op bezoek - Fluwelen Burgwal - Electriciteitsbedrijf - Prinsengracht - Jan Hendrikstraat - Station West - Kettingstraat - Algemeen Fonds - Herengracht - Grotemarkt - Vrij Parkeren - Hooikade - Kans - Denneweg -Noordeinde - Station Noord - Lange Poten - Spui - Waterleiding - Dagelijkse Groenmarkt - Naar de Gevangenis - Venestraat - Vlamingstraat - Algemeen Fonds - Haagsche Bluf - Station Oost - Kans - Spuistraat - Extra Belasting and Lange Voorhout (where a number of embassies are established).

Subject: Mondriopoly - Dutch board 1943
               (click on picture for a picture of 664x670 pixels)
Artist: Nick Blackburn - London - Oct.2002
Dimensions of the game board: 35 x 35 cm

On his versatile web-site http://www.snap-dragon.com/index.html Nick Blackburn - London also made a comprehensive chapter called Mondrian Homage. It contains paintings of a great variety of subjects painted the Mondriaan way.

Being a great admirer of the Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan as well as a Monopoholic  he asked me for a copy of an early Dutch Monopoly gameboard. And next is what he made of it.