Wheeler~Dealer - Thrift Store Score

Jan 26

Jan 26 Wheeler~Dealer - Thrift Store Score

Or as we like to call it “Wheelin’ ‘N’ Dealin’ ”!

TaMera and Jewel took a chance on this game after finding it in the twenty-five cents bin…of frames?? The cashiers gave it to us for the quarter since they weren’t sure why it would have been placed in there. (Maybe another customer decided against it?)

Whether or not this game ended up being fun we were going to keep it because it was a fundraising game for the county-seat over from us: Fairbury. (Most of the stores are no longer in business but a few are going strong!) The game is in the same vein of Monopoly and/or Careers but still uniquely it own game. It’s dated 1986 and looking past the issues with the box, it was BRAND NEW!

It has become our favorite game to play. We play it alot with our cousin Emme and even brought it down to Texas to play it with Trevor and Kimberly!

You can have as many as 6 players plus the banker. (It says that the banker can also be a player but Jewel usually plays as the banker and she doesn’t know how someone could do both! …well, other than Jeff our brother-in-law who is an accountant, of course.) The banker keeps track of the money dealings, land purchasing, investing, (at the beginning of each turn) and dividends. The object of the game is to end up with the most assets — liquid and land.

You are required to invest at least $5,000 every turn in commodities such as Eggs or Diamonds (safe-ish), with commodities like Gold and Peppermint being the highest and most risky.

For example, the highest you can invest in Peppermint is $5,000 and if you roll an 11 or 12 you get $150,000! The different commodities have different risks factors and lower or higher chances of getting a return.

When we played it with Trevor…he actually figured out that we had been playing it wrong. …See when we first played we thought that Eggs (1.2x return) and Wheat (1.3x return) was always guaranteed. But he noticed that Eggs if you roll a 4 you lose the investment and Wheat; if you roll a 5 you lose the investment as well. So yep…some days we play it correctly and other days we like to play it our way. It’s just nicer. ;)

If you roll a odd number you also get a Wheeler Dealer card. …which will either help you, tempt you or disadvantage you.

Tax Audit (above) moves you to a special space in the board to see how much tax you owe…and receive. The first roll of one die determines how much money x10,000 and the second will determine if you pay the IRS (bank) or they pay you.

For example, you roll a 5 so $50,000 is up for determination. The second roll, if you roll a 2 for example, the IRS pays you $50,000 from finding an overpay in your taxes. (Wish that was true in real life, am I right?!)

Depending on how we’re feeling we may choose to skip the Bamboozle card. With the Bamboozle card, you put a land (you own) up against land another player owns and see who rolls the highest and walks away with both. Most days we just aren’t feeling up to taking that risk.