When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I ate tons of cereal in an attempt to win your choice of a full size arcade game. Well.. one early school day morning it paid off. I popped open the new box and went straight for the game. I was shocked that I won and started yelling amd screaming. My Mom said to stop yelling no one wins those things. My Dad took it and looked at it and started smiling and said well I think he really did win! I picked the 25 Anniversary Star Trek game and it arrived about 2 months later. We spent hours playing that thing in the basement and surprisingly I became quite popular.

Other than a karma or two here, I have never won a dang thing anywhere/anytime. My wife and kids keep buying lottery tickets and enter in all kinds of things. I keep telling them it’s a waste of time. I have never even met a lottery winner or big item winner.

I won a beautiful Citizen Watch in the Horse Raffle here on the forum a number of years ago. Generously donated by Dave Truong, I still wear it every day.

Other than that I have not won any significant manufacturers giveaways.

However, my mother-in-law one a 1987 Corvette on a slot machine in Vegas. She cashed out from the casino, came home and bought two Pontiacs. I think at that time the car was valued at about $27,000.

I won the one million dollar grand prize in a lottery.

The payout is a dollar a year, for a million years.

My dad won a 1975 Toyota Corolla that was a door prize at a big trade group Xmas party.

Few years later, I won a 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix that was the grand prize from a `enter to win` contest at a big box store.

My son is -so far- not continuing the tradition...

My wife won a swimming pool once. We already had one so we gave it to our best friends. I won a jet dust collector from Rockler. Thing is the store was 3 1/2 hours from home. I was going up there for treatments at IU med center. The manager called me to tell me I had won then tries to cash me out for $50.00. Luckily I was going up the next week and picked it up. That was 15 years ago and I still use it.