Contests, Lotteries, Winning Things: How Have You Fared?

[tomdemaine]

http://www.theprizefinder.com

This is for the UK but I'm sure there's a US version.

[Elevens]

I actually recently won a all expense paid trip to Cancun for four nights by being the 10,0059th "texter" to a local radio station. I have yet to take it, but my wife and I are trying to set a date now.

[Cornell Fiji]

When I was 12 years old Umbro held a promotion in America where contestants had to mail in a videotaped home made Umbro commercial.

The winners of the contest received two tickets to the Euro96 soccer tournament and a free ten day trip to England.

I knew someone who had something to do with the promotion. Umbro planned on picking three winners but with two weeks left before the drawing they only had two entries.

I went to a local soccer field with my sister (who was 15 at the time) and we filmed a 30 second commercial.

Umbro ended up only having 4 people the contest and there was no way that they weren't going to pick the two kids who sent in a video. Ship the free trip to England.

[Marc H]

I've won a bunch of stuff, predominantly through radio call-in contests ...

Biggest score would be a week's trip (from the USA) to Sydney, Australia. Winners got to see an Alanis Morisette show and meet the opening act (Frente) backstage, but the rest of the week was your own. Won by being the 7th caller when they announced. They were very careful to remind callers that you need a passport to travel to Australia. The station took a weekend's worth of hourly winners (~50) and picked a name Monday morning. Which wasn't MY name ...

... BUT that person didn't have a passport!
So they drew again and I came up lucky. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Also won a trip for a weekend in Florida during Spring Training one year; probably 10 or so sets of concert tickets, including front row seats twice; baseball, basketball, and hockey game tickets; and some minor swag.

I've also appeared as a contestant on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (back in the good old days of the show, March 2000) but that was a combination of skill and luck. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[PITTM]

update: lost final 4 contest. hopefully that gives me extra sklansky bux for the Champions League Final Lottery.

[kipin]

I think this thread is pretty contentless, but its still fun to brag about what I have won.

Back in highschool I won a sweet hat after finding a lucky bottle cap under the lid of some Citra.

A couple years ago I answered a product survey conducted by HBO and won first prize which was my choice of any HBO Series DVD. I picked Band of Brothers.

Other than that I havn't really won much, although I don't really go looking for contests to enter.

[danlux]

Last month I bought a single $1 ticket that had 6 separate ways to win. I won $25, $25, $10, $5, $5, and $2. The odds of winning $25 by itself was 1 in 400. Even before this I was up lifetime in scratch offs.

[Kost]

5 years ago I won a Paper, Scissors, Rock contest with more than 60 entrants. Icecream in 1st.

When I was seven I won a "find-five-things-that-are-wrong" contest in a magazine. 1st price: a Milli Vanilli cassette

[IggyWH]

I was sitting in holiday traffic one day driving home from work when I heard a commercial on the radio talking about if you see a blue cross/blue shield van, go on the website and tell us where to be entered into a contest. I look over to my left and in Home Depot parking lot was the van they were talking about. When I got home, I went on the website and entered. I only entered it because grand prize was a blue PT Cruiser. This was when they had first came out and blue was not an available color.

A couple months later, I got an email saying I had won 2nd place. I almost deleted the email although when I saw it, I figured I had won a t-shirt or something lame like that. Turns out I won a $1000 gift certificate to Amazon.com. I was pissed because I was like "What am I gonna do with $1000 worth of books?" I then looked at the website and found out they sold a lot more than books. Ended up buying myself a new computer.

==============

When I was real young, I was selected from a TV contest to participate in a Sega Challenge. 10 of us went to the local mall and played Sonic Spinball with the highest score taking home the grand prize. I took 2nd for a free year of the Sega Channel. First place got the Sega Channel for a year and a 32X, if you guys remember what they are.


That's about it for me.

[PITTM]

so my friend lost the final 4 contest, but when he tuned in on the way to work this morning they were running another contest, he called in and won, not knowing the prize. two tickets to see robert randolph, pretty rad imo. i dont think he would dig it really though.