About twenty iPods.

Walkers, a snack company, was running a contest where you could enter a draw every ten minutes, 24 hours a day, to win an iPod. They also had a website where you could get an entry code without buying anything. I was one of the few people to have unlimited texts and a phone controllable by Bluetooth at the time, so I ran a script to just spam the free entry codes. Somehow they never cottoned on.

When I was a kid we won second in a general mills national contest for “a treasure chest of games.” They sent us a cardboard board with plastic pieces and like 4 games on it. Someone sued based on the commercial, and we got some cereal coupons.

Many years later, I won like 3rd in a Mountain Dew cap contest. They actually sent me the snow board - no binding or anything, but Mountain Dew has integrity.

I won some stuff in a church raffle when I was a teenager. Nothing remarkable - i think a suitcase.

I also won some sex toys from a charity raffle for repro rights, but some past partner took them. Not sure who, but I don’t have them anymore.

Thinking about it for the first time now, it is funny how those are two very different contexts.

I was a volunteer working at the first LinuxCon in 2009, I worked in the expo hall and at the end of the first day one of the booths had a raffle to win an android G1 developer phone and I ended up winning.

The best part was, by winning the phone instead of having to buy it through t–mobile I was able to keep my service without having to pay for adding data and it was a couple years before I had to actually start paying for data.

When I was a kid my parents won some kind of sweepstakes or drawing. Well it was like third or fourth prize, but it was a huge box (a cube almost as tall as my legs are now) that was just filled with cereals.

A Kellogg’s contest, I believe. Can’t remember for sure.

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.

I won on a radio call-in show called “name that tune,” three times. They took two callers. First one gets one second of music and time to answer. If they fail, the second gets ten seconds of music and time to answer.

I was in the one-second position all three times. I was sort of amazed that I kept winning. The prize was a CD in each game. That’s how I got into Stabbing Westward, as I wouldn’t have bought Whither, Blister, Burn and Peel myself, but it was a prize.

I got Drake’s leather diary from the uncharted games through a subway sweepstake.

I already won the lottery. Born in the US of A baby!

I won Blockbusters Donkey Kong tournament for the SNES when I was 6. Got a champions card that gave me one free video game rental every other week for a year. I won at two stores and my brother won in 3 stores in his age bracket. So we constantly had free new games to play. That was the best year ever.

Maybe fun fact: Dr. Disrepect’s “Two Time Champion” claim is from these blockbuster tournaments.

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.

My family won a Super Nintendo from a mini wheats box when I was a kid.

• I was the winner of my school’s science competition, I’d made a volcano that could emit “lava” (baking soda and vinegar)
• At school I won a contest where we had to design posters for movies that didn’t exist, and the winner would get theirs put on the wall
• Lots of high-speed go-karting sessions!
• Not sure if this counts as a competition, but I had an admin of an art website select my art and feature it on the front page for a while which resulted in it getting almost 500,000 views (I remember panicking wondering why I suddenly got so many messages in my inbox!)

I won a geolocation game from Rita’s and got a year of free Italian Ices. Every day during March they gave out a geolocation and you had a certain amount of time to find them to win. The first few days i missed the time limit. A couple times i was second. After a week or so i noticed a general pattern and started closer to the part of town i thought they would be. The day i won i was in the parking lot of the stadium where they were and watched them setting up. as soon as they sent out the geolocation i walked up and claimed my prize.

I somehow managed to get through to a radio show that was having a giveaway, and answered their question correctly. I won tickets to a concert, and a load of their sponsor’s merch. I was still young, but even then I knew my luck was shit, so I was really excited even though I didn’t like the band I was going to see lol

Didn’t matter.

The tickets arrived the day after the concert had happened, and the merch was all either factory seconds or used (so all slightly damaged in some way - a stain, an undone seam, a broken clasp). I tried calling to let them know, but all they did was send another load of damaged merch.

Off the top of my head, that’s the one and only thing I’ve ever won.

I really do have shit luck lol