Radio question. Sibling knew the answer, but didn’t want to call. Mother was driving. So I called. Have the answer. It was correct and I was the first. We won tickets to some young kids show and gave them to a family friend.

I also won a Weird Al lookalike contest. Despite being female. I was one of three people there and the only one trying. Which meant Hawaiian shirt, my old huge glasses, and permed my hair. Got front row tickets for that, which is all I wanted so my very short sibling could see the concert. Also got to meet him though, that was nice.

On my 18th birthday I bought 2 scratch lottery tickets, and doubled my money (20EUR spend, 40EUR return). Never played since. I beat the system 😎

When I was a kid, maybe 13 years old, I heard about a Halloween costume contest at a natural history museum.

I wanted a costume somehow science related, so I decided to dress as a mosquito (seems weird to me now, but whatever). My mom sewed together a black felty fabric into a proboscis that went out over my head and a sort of cloak down my back with legs coming off it. We cut a Styrofoam ball in half and painted it yellow for the eyes. The wings were a white mesh fabric on a frame of drinking straws that we taped together.

I won the contest for my age bracket, and the prize was some Star Trek: Deep Space 9 refrigerator magnets. I don’t think I have the magnets anymore, but I still have the costume, though it’s falling apart a little.

Okay, I have to go text my mom and tell her she’s awesome.

Back in the mid 90’s, I won a “Rocko’s Modern Life,” t-shirt from a Nickelodeon contest. It was one where you’d have to call a phone # when his face would pop up in the bottom corner or something like that for like 10 seconds. Caller # whatever, could win the grand prize or whatever but I got a tee. Wore that shirt with pride all the fucking time.

My wife and I did part of our gift registry at ‘crate and barrel’, they had a business card pot to have a drawing from for some cookware, I had just gotten my first business cards, and remembered a tip I’d read about bending/creasing the business card in half before dropping it in. I tried it and we won a 4 quart ‘le cruset’ sauce pot. It’s the most expensive piece of cookware we have, and it’s amazing. I haven’t used that trick since then, partially out of guilt, partially out of being 1 for 1 on business card draws.

When I was still being taken to church I won the door prize at youth group (church for teens) one night during a special event we were running (some thing to encourage people to invite their non-believing school friends and show how “hip” and “fun” they were, there were raffles and video games alongside our usual “live music”, skate ramps and bbq). The prize itself was a mobile phone. I was so happy because I didn’t already have one, but ultimately my parents decided I couldn’t have/use it until I got a job to pay for the credit. I did eventually get a job at KFC and was able to use the phone.

Another time I was visiting NZ with my parents and we were touring the base of a mountain and the guide was like “guess the height and whoever gets closest wins this pen”, I won but my mum made me give the pen back because she thought I’d cheated somehow? Idfk. Still a bit salty about the pen.

When the internet was still young I entered an online drawing to win a vacation on a travel website. I never really thought much of it. One day I decided to answer the phone even though we got lots of telemarketers. The woman was from the travel company and said I’d won a rafting trip in CO and that this had been their third and final attempt to reach me. It was totally legit, they paid for the flight, rafting trip and rental car. Due to low river levels the trip was moved to the San Juan river in UT though. It was an awesome trip. We even paid some extra to keep the rental car longer to add some extra sightseeing days to the trip.

Nope. But my GF is one of the luckiest people on earth. By now she won a car, 3 holidays, a travel bag, heck we are going to holiday on ice this Sunday, we bought the ticket last year, and we picked the only spot where thommy ten and amélie van tass have a show. We got upgraded hotels multiple times for free, she even once got a graphic designer monitor for half the price due to something.

Around 1981 or 82, I was about 12 years old and the local college radio station had a call-in for identifying snips of popular songs at the time. Best I can recall, it was Girls by Dwight Twilly, Let the Music Play by Shannon, and I think there were 3 others but I can’t remember what they were. The prize was a discount coupon to the local pizza place.

We had a raffle at the local community center. Everyone bought tickets, and the prizes seemed decent (bottle of wine, large wicker chair, rocking horse). The winner of all three draws was the long-standing cleaning lady of the center, who had just had a grandchild and was heading for retirement.

I’m all for supporting someone’s retirement, especially for someone who has given a lot of effort to making the community feel hospitable.
But not like this, not like this…

Scholarship. When I was still in school.

F’n fruitbasket when I was about 10. Nothing after that. Although I don’t usually participate.

I won a robot R2D2 in a raffle. This was like over 10 years ago. It had voice commands, and somehow understood me better than Siri.

I won a keg of beer on the entry ticket to a local beer festival.

A local hotel/chateau had organised it. They had failed with their marketing, and managed to pick the same weekend as a much larger beer festival in the same city.

I got ticket #26 on day 1, Saturday. I don’t think they sold more than ten tickets after me that day. I walked past with my dogs the following day and there were like four people there.

Oh, and I also won the demo competition at a local demoparty. First prize was a bag of chips and a brush for doing dishes.

And the 64k intro competition at the biggest demoparty at the time. First prize was a big-ass box of sponsored hardware - graphics cards and processors and stuff.

I didn’t think anyone actually won Instagram contests, but my spouse won a magnum of locally roasted coffee which is lovely, and a free Valentine’s dinner at a very nice restaurant in Buffalo. I won a board game called Scruples for answering some ethics question in a column in the newspaper the Globe and Mail. Many years ago before it became what it is now.

I worked at Starbucks 25 years ago, when it was actually not a bad job and had some nice perks and was actually pretty good to work for. There was a game called Cranium that was sold through Starbucks then, and there was a contest for staff for a draw to win a VW bug with Cranium decals on it, and amazingly my coworker one, the decals could be removed. It was actually pretty nice.