Sweepstakes - Anyone Ever Won Anything Decent ?

Anyone ever won anything decent by entering
a free contest or sweepstakes ?

I'm not above putting my name into a free
drawing.

Over the years, I've won a $ 200 gift card
at a local store, and a ~ $ 100 Nikon camera.

Not quite enough to quit the day job...

In the mid 80s, I collected the correct puzzle pieces in a McDonald's contest to win an Atari 2600. Does that count?

About 3 years ago a website i frequent had monthly drawings as they had for several years, but no longer have. In one of the drawings I won $50 worth of Modiano products. I chose 4 Cristallo's and two plain wood boxes for storage. I think I paid $10 including shipping. (Total a little over 50 and worth it.)

El Gordo lottery mail in sweepstakes with a grand prize of millions of dollars. I was fortunate to win a prize of like $6 bucks. Not bad for the price of a stamp.

Best lottery winner I heard of was a guy in Washington State who bought a ticket on Canadian lottery. Seems it was like $100,000.
Bought a farm and started breeding race horses. First foal was none other than SEATTLE SLEW !

In 2008 I received an email from Coca Cola informing me I won a years worth of groceries. It included a form to be printed and filled out with SS# and to be notarized. Now since I was at work and had nothing better to do I decided to follow through on this scam. So Coke being one of the largest corporations in the world I decided to give them a call. About 4 hours of phone calls later I got the person who was the ED of promotions for the Coke Points. He convinced me it was on the level.

I send in the forms w SS# and notary seal. Low and behold 5 weeks later 52 $100 A&P (yes they still exist) gift cards arrived. Being just me and my wife they lasted close to 2 years. Some still pop up. Found one a few weeks ago in a suitcase in a pile of players cards.

I won a green x-box and the Hulk game from a Mountain Dew. The x-box is lime green and has the Mountain Dew insignia on it, it's awesome.

In 1997 I entered a create-a-pizza contest that was offered by a company called Mama Mary's, that made pizza shells. I submitted my recipe and forgot all about it until one day a couple of months later when I got a call from the contest coordinator informing me that out of thousands and thousands of entries I was one of 8 semi-finalists, and they gave me a year's supply of coupons for their free pizza shells and a very nice coffemaker that I eventually re-gifted for someone's wedding.

The best part, tho, was that one of the Birmingham TV stations called and invited me to be on their morning show. It seems that out of the 8 semi-finalists picked from all over the country there were two of us within 20 miles of each other so they had us both on. When the host called me I thought it was one of my husband's friends, joking around. We had to bring our pizzas so I had to get up at 4am and cook, which was one of the hardest things I ever had to do :).

The other woman ended up being one of the final 4 finalists and went to Disneyworld for the cook-off and I didn't make the cut, but I have a videotape of my television appearance and snapshots of me with the local TV celebs, so I still consider myself a winner.

If you've ever had a pizza topped with sliced chicken and alfredo sauce, chances are they got the idea from me because that was the recipe I submitted.

Quote: tsmith

If you've ever had a pizza topped with sliced chicken and alfredo sauce, chances are they got the idea from me because that was the recipe I submitted.

Yelp, I have an olive garden chicken alfredo pizza almost everyday. The old lady works there and gets it for $4 instead of 9 or 10.

You gave me a good laugh though. My pops has an old chicken alfredo pizza recipe from ages ago. yellowed paper and what not. So sorry to tell you that you are not the first to think that one up.

Mine I boil hambers in pickle juice and v8 juice, dillmans maranade and creole. Cut that up put it on the pizza with sausage and pickle slices. ummmmmmm. And amounts matter. Cannot part with that one.

Quote: i0r0retardod

You gave me a good laugh though. My pops has an old chicken alfredo pizza recipe from ages ago. yellowed paper and what not. So sorry to tell you that you are not the first to think that one up.

I guess that's why I didn't make it to the finals. :)

Quote: Wavy70

...........promotions for the Coke Points.

Is this the Coke points program they still have ? I used
the "mycokerewards.com" program points to go see the
House of Blues Gospel brunch in LV once.

Once I won an orange Fanta "gift pack" from calling in to a radio contest. The prize included a 6 pack of orange Fanta bottles, an orange Fanta tshirt, and a soft-sided beverage cooler with a built-in radio on the front! Also branded with orange Fanta logos.

I still wear the tshirt. I love it.

When I was a kid, ShopKo ran a promotion where you could get a scan card at the register and take it to a machine. While checking out at the register, the cashier told us to take as many cards as nobody ever wins anything. We took two, swiped the first one, nothing. The second one said we won a trip to Busch Gardens in FL. We went to Customer Service who said that it had malfunctioned before, and they had the accurate reader.

Sure enough, we won the trip to BG. We had a great time.

I've won three or four casino promotions too...

Quote: JohnnyQ

Is this the Coke points program they still have ? I used
the "mycokerewards.com" program points to go see the
House of Blues Gospel brunch in LV once.

Yes same program. We had been entering the codes for free 12 packs. Dumb luck it was. Got a promo code on the bottom of a receipt from the A&P. Entered it at the MyCokeRewards site. Bored at work I was checking my spam folder when I saw the e mail. Had less than a week by the time I saw the email before I forfeited it.