High Society is a Reiner Knizia game from 1995. I have heard of it so many times that I feel like I have played it before. This is one of the classics from Reiner Knizia that always comes back in print.  

This is an auction game. Everyone starts with the same set of money cards, each a different denomination, from $1 to $25. That’s all the money you will have in the game. A deck of properties will be auctioned off, one at a time. They have different point values. There are some special cards in the mix, some good and some bad. A good card can double your victory points. A bad one forces you to discard one property. Another bad one halves your victory points. Every round one card is revealed from the deck and auctioned off. One twist in the game is you don’t know exactly when the game will end. It ends immediately when the last of the double and half cards is drawn. The challenge the game presents is you don’t know how far you should preserve your money. If you use your money too quickly you won’t be able to compete when big cards show up. If you keep too much money and the game ends early, you would have missed the opportunities to buy valuable properties. 

When you bid, you don’t make change. If you have placed a bid and you are overbid by someone else, you can only counter bid by adding more cards from your hand. This means sometimes you are forced to spend more than you wish. 

The most important twist is whoever has the least money when the game ends is automatically disqualified. You must keep some money to avoid being the poorest. 

When bad cards are being auctioned, it is done in a different manner. You bid to not take the card. The first player to pass takes the card. Everyone else who has placed a bid must pay up. Bad cards will usually force many people to spend money. Good cards only require the buyer to pay. 

This is a simple game that is full of difficult decisions. The specialcards can have huge impacts. You are torn between keeping enough money to notget disqualified and winning enough properties to win the game.