Cartman has posted in the random thoughts thread that he won something for registering a product and that got me thinking. What's the best thing I've ever won in any sort of contest.

I remember when I was like 10, my parents let me buy a scratch off lottery ticket- Texas didn't have a lottery at the time and we were in New Mexico so I was curious. I won $1. I asked if I could get another one and... I won another $1. Then I asked if I could get one more and... I won $1. So, I had to cash that in and was completely even on the New Mexico lottery.

A couple of times, I've won stuff from radio call in like Royals tickets or convention tickets but nothing really substantial.

I guess if you're in a mid-stakes to expensive fantasy league, like $100 or more per team, someone on this board had to have racked up $1000 or more from that. Or a big NCAA tournament pool- I've won like $50 a couple of times doing that but I don't really count it. Or, say, poker as those are games of chance + skill were you're bound to get lucky if you play enough and are good enough.

Anyone with a cool contest winning story?

SI

Won a crystal decanter set at a media party at the Georgia Dome a number of years back, that's easily the biggest ticket thing I've won.

I've cashed for over 5K profit in several poker tournaments, not sure if that fall under the "spirit" of the question since I don't consider it a lottery type win.

Won a sword from pre-ordering Crusader Kings.

I was at a conference last spring and I won a Flip video camera. Really flippin' sweet (apologies for the pun, haha)

Also won a $100 bar tab on a Super Bowl pool a few years back. That was sweet.

I won a raffle on Philles.com that won me 2 standing room only tickets to Game 4 of the 2008 World Series.

Last year I was rooting for the Colts in the Super Bowl until Manning threw that pick 6. At that point I won the Super Bowl office pool and $1000 which I used to go to Hawaii for 10 days!

A weekend trip to Milan to go se AC Milan play at San Siro. That was really sweet. Very nice city.

Going the fantasy league route. $75 entry, $1 moves, 12 teams. I won it back to back years, each year taking $600+. That was 2003 and 2004. Haven't been close since.

More recently, and on a much smaller scale. Last year at a Penguins game got stopped in the concourse and asked if my daughter wanted to sign up for Tag-a-kid. Basically she gets a wrist band saying where our seats are should she get lost. No real reason to, except she said she wanted to.

Sign up, figure that's the end. Took my son back at the end of the 2nd period because he had to do the same thing his sister did.

Middle of the 3rd someone approaches our seats "Are you Lucy? " My daughter looks at me, up at them..."yes"

She won an autographed puck for signing up. She was so proud. Monetary value probably $20, but she thought she just hit the lottery.

Without getting into sports betting, poker, or fantasy football cashouts. Id say the best lotto type prize I have won is a $400 gift card to best buy in a random drawing. I did hit 4 numbers on the powerball one time(pd $100) odds of that happening are over 19,000-1. I was disappointed with the payout on that.

won a 2 day trip to primm, nevada for a sales contest for cleveland golf. it's one of those podunk casinos between la and vegas but has a really nice 54 hole robert trent jones designed golf course.

but by far the best part was the first night there james woods was stalking me in the casino. ok, probably not stalking but no matter where i went- sports book, slots, craps look up and there's fucking james woods. it was awesomely bizarre.

I won $1000 on a television game show. Many of you have seen the video.

More recently, and on a much smaller scale. Last year at a Penguins game got stopped in the concourse and asked if my daughter wanted to sign up for Tag-a-kid. Basically she gets a wrist band saying where our seats are should she get lost. No real reason to, except she said she wanted to.

Sign up, figure that's the end. Took my son back at the end of the 2nd period because he had to do the same thing his sister did.

Middle of the 3rd someone approaches our seats "Are you Lucy? " My daughter looks at me, up at them..."yes"

She won an autographed puck for signing up. She was so proud. Monetary value probably $20, but she thought she just hit the lottery.

I had forgotten about this as I never won but I've been to Royals games where my wife and a friend of mine won the designated driver prize. The first time there were some of our usual group with 4 or 5 there and one of the guys won a jacket.

The other time was the last time we were in KC after having moved to Richmond about a year earlier- there were like 10 of us as it was a good excuse to go back and hang out and my wife won (it was a shirt that time). Even funnier is that even tho we had moved away a year earlier, the guy in guest services recognized her from all the games we went to when we lived there.

Frankly, it's more cool I think for them to get the name on the scoreboard than the logo gear but it's pretty cool either way :)

SI

I won a fleece blanket in a raffle in college. Not exactly a huge prize, but I've rarely entered any kind of lotto in my life and it was a pretty sweet blanket.

Since discovering FOFC, I've been drawn into the fantasy sports genre of games. Sure, I played in soccer games from the mid 90's, but I went into more online free games since then. In 2004 I joined an annual fantasy tour de france game with friends and family. I noticed I have a good kanck for the cycling world and decided to look around on the web for free fantasy cycling games.

Fast forward to the summer of 2007. Back then T-Mobile was still a big sponsor in cycling and were hosting their own free fantasy game. Every major race had their own game, complete with real prizes and such. Amongst them was a fantasy game for the Tour of Benelux (Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg). Key was selecting enough general classification riders. The tricky part was that the game also forced players to select at least two T-Mobile riders to keep the link with the fanbase. Additionally, you got one substitution during the race.

Anyway, I selected the then still relatively unknown sprinter Mark Cavendish from T-Mobile, one of his sidekicks, current world champion Thor Hushovd and what I felt where the five best time-trials specialists in that field, going into the last stage, I substituted Hushovd for a sixth time-trialist. I'll spare the day by day details, but in the end, Cavendish won a couple of stages and the points classification, moreover those six time-trialists finished first through sixth in the GC. As a result, I managed to win the game in a land slide over thousands of German cycling fans.

The grand prize was a T-Mobile cycling jersey, signed by the entire team. I feared I wouldn't get it as a foreigner, but T-Mobile wasn't making a problem of it and they sent me the jersey. I'm not much of a starstruck guy, so the autographs didn't mean much to me, but it was still pretty cool winning that game and getting an original prize for it as well.

$300 cash at some work related vendor event.

I won a bet with a then girlfriend's older sister.
It paid off huge in 2 ways.
1 the payout was fun...
It cost me the relationship, while the girlfriend was cool with the bet when we made it it caused all kinda drama afterwards and we broke up...she ended up completely psycho and burned down her 1st husband's house...

Win, Win

I won a bet with a then girlfriend's older sister.
It paid off huge in 2 ways.
1 the payout was fun...
It cost me the relationship, while the girlfriend was cool with the bet when we made it it caused all kinda drama afterwards and we broke up...she ended up completely psycho and burned down her 1st husband's house...

Win, Win

My friend, you also just won this thread.

Yeah. He deserves a custom title.

I didn't know Left Eye had an older sister.

I won a three day trip to Las Vegas, a Lenovo laptop and a cash prize in a sportswriting contest last year. I was supposed to win a gig on a major sports website but the editor blew me off.

I've never won much in a contest before, but Mercedes Benz just did this three day tweet race and the winning team were two guys from the higher ed community. I've met the one guy when we were on this judging panel for a higher ed awards thing a few years back and he's hilarious, but also really good at what he does. So it's sort of cool to see how people can mobilize around a cause.

Basically, the team that could mobilize their people to tweet the most for them would win. They raised about $45k for St. Jude's Children's Hospital, their charity in three days because of their work and they both won brand new Benzs.

State team wins Mercedes-Benz social media race (http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/115582404.html)

I won a Super Go Bot from a can of Nestles Quik in 1984. I was so excited I went out into the street and ran around screaming at the top of my lungs. They ended up sending me a certificate for the free one and I got this guy:

http://www.fast-autos.net/diecast-cars-models/diecast-car-image-large/bug-bite-super-gobots-go-bots-vintage-100-complete_190477815803.jpg

I also won a signed Peyton Manning football from a pack of football cards back in '03. I sold it in '05 for like $150.

And that's all I've ever won.

ESPN had a contest in the... early 2000s I think... where they would pop up 3 athletes or maybe teams and if you were logged in you picked one. Whoever had the best game that day/week/whatever time period you were picking for, they did a random drawing amongst everyone that picked that person and the winner got $1000. I think they gave away $1000/week that way? I won once. The interesting part of it to me is that I didn't know I won. The e-mail from ESPN went into my spam folder. There was a limited amount of time to claim your prize. A couple weeks before that time limit was up I got an e-mail from another winner asking how long it took to receive my check(there was a list of winners posted on the site somewhere), and that triggered me to go looking at this list and go looking through my spam e-mail and to get in touch with their people to claim my prize.

Looking back on it now I cannot believe how fuzzy my memory is on this. I won $1000 for doing nothing at all... I can't remember the name of the contest, what year it was, exactly how the contest worked, anything at all! I remember getting my 1099 and paying taxes on it, that's about it :D

ESPN had a contest in the... early 2000s I think... where they would pop up 3 athletes or maybe teams and if you were logged in you picked one. Whoever had the best game that day/week/whatever time period you were picking for, they did a random drawing amongst everyone that picked that person and the winner got $1000. I think they gave away $1000/week that way? I won once. The interesting part of it to me is that I didn't know I won. The e-mail from ESPN went into my spam folder. There was a limited amount of time to claim your prize. A couple weeks before that time limit was up I got an e-mail from another winner asking how long it took to receive my check(there was a list of winners posted on the site somewhere), and that triggered me to go looking at this list and go looking through my spam e-mail and to get in touch with their people to claim my prize.

Looking back on it now I cannot believe how fuzzy my memory is on this. I won $1000 for doing nothing at all... I can't remember the name of the contest, what year it was, exactly how the contest worked, anything at all! I remember getting my 1099 and paying taxes on it, that's about it :D

I used to love that contest

2 prizes...

I first won a Merrilat wall unit on "Time Out For Trivia" with Todd Donoho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORE_%28television%29) on some basic cable station (edit: FNN). Used it in my dorm, then apartment. Good craftsmanship, I must say.

More recently, I won a year subscription to Baseball Prospectus for finishing in the top 10 of the Hacking Mass (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/hm/?mode=team&owner=ptakers&nocache=1296947830) contest.

I haven't won anything but my mom won the Buckeye Five lottery for 100k about 10 years ago.

Won a pair of loge-level Dodger tickets to the game in which Andre Ethier ended up getting his first major league hit. That was cool.

Won the first Sidekick phone plus one yr of service from ESPN online.

Oh, I remember another couple of fun sports-based ones.

I went to the IHL finals the year the Houston Aeros were playing for the Turner Cup and they were trying to get rid of all of their shirts or just throwing extras but it seemed like they gave away hundreds. A friend and I both caught a Houston Aeros White Out tees.

Also, at the Royals game, my wife and I once won the Seat Upgrade. There were always 3 of us who went to every game- myself, my wife (once I got her into baseball), and a friend of mine. Well, there was one game he didn't go to with us because his car broke down coming out from Manhattan (he was at K-State at the time)- he'd meet us in Lawrence and we'd drive the rest of the way. Well, that was the day they picked us and a random couple behind us for the seat upgrade and it was great. Our idea of splurging for tickets was spending $8 to go to the middle of the upper deck instead of the $5 outfield upper deck seats. So to get moved way down to the lower deck without having to sneak down there late in the game was great :D

SI

My Dad put my name in a drawing when I was 3 at the local grocery store. I won a motorcycle. We got rid of the motorcycle after my brothers ran me over while I was riding my big wheel. (got 2nd/3rd degree burns on my leg from the exhaust pipe)

Thankfully I didn't suffer any permanent scars or injuries since I was really young. However, my Dad used up all my raffle mojo at 3 so.. thanks Dad.

I've won concert tickets from radio stations before (Anastasia -- if anyone remembers her -- and The Clarks). I couldn't make either because they were the same day I won (and I probably wouldn't have gone to Anastasia anyway).

My wife won an evening (dinner and the night) at a pretty nice resort once. It was pretty cool and the food was awesome.

I've won my keeper fantasy league 3 out of the last 4 years.. So much so that they blew up keepers to start with fresh redraft next season.. i consider it a challenge..

In Elementry school we had a fundraising drive where you had to sell at least 5 to be entered into a raffle to win prizes.. I "sold" 5 to family members.. and won the grand prize (a scooter) while the kid who sold nearly 300 boxes of cookies got shut out.. ha!

we have a lot of raffles / contests at work. In my current non-sales position, I don't have as many opportunities, but over the years I've won a few iPods, two laptops, a nice printer, a trip to the SuperBowl, a trip to St Maarten, a trip to Cancun (couldn't go on this one), a $3000 shopping spree from from Sony, various sporting event tickets and lots of smaller cash prizes.

definitely cant' complain. [EDIT: or use apostrophes correctly]

Not that the team was good, but I put my name in a drawing at the MN state fair and ended up winning Season tickets to the Timberwolves last year. In the end I sold them for a few hundred dollars.

So it was a nice consolation prize...

Mrs SR had Steelers 5/Packers 1 in her block pool at work. $1,000

Not that I'll see a dime.

I won an iPod Touch and an iPad from two different vendor raffles at the same conference last year.

I won a walk on part for the TV show Clubhouse with Dean Cane and Christopher Lloyd. Plus, hotel and airfare and 300 dollars cash. Actually, my wife (well ex-wife now) won it for me for a Father's Day contest for a radio station in San Diego. Her letter was the winning letter.

Needless to say, shortly after we won, the show was moved to the Friday night 'death slot' and was then canceled about 2 weeks before we were supposed to go up to LA.

Had the Pack -2' and then at the half grabbed the Steelers +8.

Im sure I wasnt the only one who 'won' those two plays.

http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv/a-team-gp.jpg

A couple years ago at work, I won the use of a parking spot very close to the entrance door for one year. We're talking handicaped parking type of close to the door. Given how cold/windy/snowy it can get around here, that was a very nice prize.

FM

I won like 400 bucks in our fantasy football playoff challenge.

Go Go Girls of the Apocolypse (http://www.amazon.com/Go-Go-Girls-Apocalypse-Victor-Gischler/dp/1416552251/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297117155&sr=1-1)
Blonde Bombshell (http://www.amazon.com/Blonde-Bombshell-Tom-Holt/dp/0316086991/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297117193&sr=1-1)

Thanks, getglue!

While the $1000 I won on a television game show is still the best thing I've ever won, and the $40 on a different episode of the same television game show is in second place, I am pretty impressed by one other thing I won. I won funny looks from my wife's family when they found my DVD copy of Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold on our mantle when they came to visit us once. I still treasure those looks, although I don't necessarily treasure the death threats.

Gigantism is nothing to be laughing at man.

a lamp in the shape of a leg, it was a major award.

I was 3rd place in our company sales contest and I won getting fired.

I was 3rd place in our company sales contest and I won getting fired.

Was first place a new Cadillac and 2nd place a set of steak knives?

I haven't won anything other than random poker tournaments, but I got my image into a video game. That was cool.

Which game?

SI

Which game?

SI

http://www.santellocco.com/atari/immagini/schermate/giochi/strippoker.png

http://www.santellocco.com/atari/immagini/schermate/giochi/strippoker.png

Nailed it, actually.

Actually, it was ESPN NFL2k5.

Also won a $100 bar tab on a Super Bowl pool a few years back. That was sweet.

Oh, actually that reminds me of mine, I think. I was at a friend's parents' NYE party, where they were running casino-style games with fake money. At the end of the night they had auctions for mystery boxes. I managed to win the bid on the first - which was full of 8-10 bottles of booze. Captain, Wild Turkey, Seagrams VO, Creme de Minthe, Beefeater, Cuervo, vodka (can't remember the brand)...it was a haul. I *still* have some of the VO.

The only other thing that comes to mind was my 75 pound football banquet, where I had my door prize ticket called. By that time all the baseball mitts, bats, footballs, etc. were taken. I got a TI calculator.

Won a micro-wave oven with an elementary school lottery ticket (from a small nighbour kid). Still working at parents house.

Won a micro-wave oven with an elementary school lottery ticket (from a small nighbour kid). Still working at parents house.

What does the small kid do at your parents house?

What does the small kid do at your parents house?

What does Vinnie Johnson do at your parents house?