"Play money" and "prop money" get used interchangeably online, but they're built for different jobs. Board-game play money is a toy — thin card stock, cartoonish colours, sized for children's hands, and regulated under Australia's general toy and product safety standards rather than currency law.
Prop money is closer to the genuine article in size, weight, and print detail, which is exactly why it needs the stricter specimen-marking treatment under the Crimes (Currency) Act rather than toy safety rules. If you're planning a kids' party game night, play money style products with bold novelty branding are the right (and cheapest) choice. If you're shooting a close-up cash-counting scene, a photo booth backdrop, or an Instagram unboxing video where the cash needs to read as real on camera, you want cinema-grade prop money for photography instead.
Mixing the two up is the single most common mistake we see from first-time buyers — a stack of toy play money will not survive a macro lens the way archival-paper prop notes do.
