Monopoly Money: Phillippa Green discusses The Royal Mint’s 90th anniversary Monopoly coin

Phillippa, you’ve interviewed with us before… People can find out all about how you came to be in the industry here. One recent project that caught my eye was your Monopoly 90th anniversary tie in! Why did this appeal?
Monopoly is one of those brands that’s succeeded in being relevant everywhere… Nearly everyone has fond memories of playing – especially if they were good at winning – and think the game is home grown. Hasbro also made it known early on that the 90th was going to be a big celebration for Monopoly and we know that our customers like to own their own piece of beautifully crafted history… So it was important that The Royal Mint had an appealing product range celebrating this moment.

Makes absolute sense! And you’ve nailed the design! What were your considerations when you started working on this? I mean… In terms of iconography, you’re really spoiled for choice!
That’s true! The Royal Mint is used to working with existing licensor assets, but we like to produce something new and original from those assets that won’t have been seen before. The design needs to be instantly recognisable; there also there needs to be enough design detail to keep the customer going back for another look and hopefully finding a detail they didn’t see before…

But not too much detail, presumably?
Exactly right. It’s a fine balance as too much detail can make a design too busy. We also like to include innovation wherever possible, but often it’s not until we have a final coin design that we can start to think about what type of innovation can be applied to our coin designs.

What was that innovation? And what informed your final decisions on the design?
The design feedback from Hasbro and Royal Mint Advisory Committee was similar and in line with my previous answer about balance. Both were keen that the design had enough space for each of the iconic elements to stand out and to make sure that we could incorporate colours from the game board on our colour versions of the coin.

This feedback helped us come to a decision on the innovation to be applied to the coin, as the special lenticular feature that transitions from the ‘GO’ sign to the ‘Monopoly Money’ symbol when you turn the coin, meaning that we could include two more iconic Monopoly elements in the design.

I was hoping you’d talk about that! The lenticular element is absolutely brilliant. What was the biggest challenge on this?
I would say the biggest challenge on this particular coin was a significantly shorter product development timeline than usual. We usually work to a three-year lead time, but the Royal Mint Advisory Committee approved this theme in March 2024 – and The Royal Mint launched the product in September 2025…

It’s only possible to make that happen when the licensor concerned is fully supportive and engaged. This launch is no exception and just would not have been possible without the support from Caroline Spooner, Carter Brown and many of their colleagues at Hasbro. In our experience, Hasbro really are a great example of a best-in-class licensor.

Fantastic! I’m curious to ask – mostly because, all things being equal, we should be around to see it – does this rule out a Monopoly centenary coin?
No, it doesn’t rule it out, but equally it isn’t a given either. There’s no hard-and-fast rule about these things. For example, we did a four-coin Harry Potter series in 2022 and 2023 to celebrate 25 years since the first publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Then, in 2024 and 2025, we’ve released four more coins celebrating iconic moments from the Harry Potter books and films. We take a lot of things into consideration, including what’s resonating with the British public at the time and how the theme fits into our launch plan for the financial year in terms of a balance of theme types and a good customer journey.

Interesting. Dare I ask what’s coming soon from the Royal Mint?
You’ve interviewed me before, so you know that I can’t tell you that, Deej! All our future themes remain confidential until Royal Proclamation has taken place. However, you can be sure that we have a future-launch plan full to the brim of exciting launches to satisfy demand from customers who love popular culture, historic, sporting, military themes and more, as well as plans to launch other metal related collectibles that you may not have seen from The Royal Mint before!

Well, for an answer that can’t be an answer, that was a great answer! Thanks, Phillippa. Always a pleasure.