Bulls and Bears: The Great Wall Street Game

The financial panic of 1873, the worst before 1929, inspired this board game, in which the Bulls and the Bears - the speculators - are depicted fleecing the sheep - the public. The gameboard imagery is derived from cartoons by Joseph Keppler and Frederick Burr Opper satirizing robber barons Jay Gould, W.H. Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage, which appeared in the illustrated weekly magazine "Puck." This is one of the rarest of all nineteenth century American board games.