1965 Vintage Careers Board Game

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We have regular fancy dress days, charity bake sales, parties, board game nights and more to keep up team morale! It may be a good idea to go to college first, since a college degree is often a requirement to get into a career with entry fees waived or reduced; and college can raise your annual salary—which you get every time you pass “Payday”—resulting in a much faster accumulation of wealth. Each inner career path offers varying amounts of Money, Fame, or Happiness and I had a choice of where I wanted to go. But, you can pay your way out of these difficulties—on Park Bench, you can pay half your cash, and in the Hospital, you can give up half your salary, which is severe.

Inside the occupation path, the players may accumulate or lose some of their fame, happiness, and fortune until reaching their respective goals. As you go round the various careers paths (which you do by throwing a single die instead of the usual two) there is opportunity to gain fame and happiness points, appropriate to the different careers themselves. However, I don’t think the money supply is finite in the game, so you could use whatever you’d like for currency (such as poker chips).

In the oldest versions of the game, players landing on a square occupied by another player are "knocked to the park bench" in one corner of the board, where they must throw a 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, or 12 to move on.

Of course, there are hazards in every career: in “Farming” you can lose half your cash in a hailstorm, and a scandal in “Hollywood” will give you 10 star points but you lose all your happiness; in “Big Business,” a slump will cut your salary by half, and in “Politics,” if you’re “caught with mink” you lose half your fame. I also understand that there was a girl’s version of the game released at some point that has “being a Super Mom” as a career path on it! If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group. One set is designed for third and fourth graders, and the more difficult cards are designed for fifth and sixth graders. There you can earn a fortune, raise your salary and earn lots of fame points, but there are severe risks – you can lose all your money and fame.

All paths have some prerequisite for entry, and benefits accrue from going through any of the paths more than once. These are the “Chance” cards in the form of Experience Cards, which I mentioned earlier, and Opportunity Cards; and these are obtained by landing on the right space on any of the career paths; there are also a surprisingly high number of spaces – eleven – on the outer track of the gameboard. Brown designed Careers to be an answer to what he perceived as the 1950s focus on greed and monetary-based self-worth.

Hence the other night me and my partner (AKA The Student Support Manager at the Department of Economics, University of Leicester) found ourselves playing the Careers board game as a Friday night treat.The game of Careers also serves as an insight into our changing interests and values over time and points out variations across different cultures. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Of course, being a Parker Brothers game, things get a tad more complex with other game elements, including special game board spaces and unique situations presented by Experience and Opportunity cards, that altered game play. This COSMOS Collector's Edition DVD set will be making a cherished Christmas gift for someone who grew up with COSMOS in 1981 era.

The upper box cover is in very good condition and the lower box cover is also in very good condition with 3 of the box edges split. Players choose certain life paths in the game, and accrue points toward a winning goal along the way.

The American game has been listed for ages 8 and up, whereas one German edition reads 10 years and up and another is 12 and up. I’m told that once everyone playing is familiar with the game it can be easier to know which careers give you what your need for your success criteria and to chase after them. Made up of three components (money, fame and happiness) each player has to decide which is most important to them and create an equation taking into account all three. There have been several versions of Careers through the years, starting in 1955, with new versions coming out in 1965, 1971, 1976, 1979, 1990, 1992, 1997, 2003, and 2008.