Have you or anyone in your family ever won anything?

My mom won a week-long trip to England from a twist-off cap on a drink called Fruitopia. She gave it to my little brother and me and we got to spend a week overseas completely unsupervised. I was 20 and he was 15. It was a really nice trip. We took advantage of all of the things included in the prize (going to Stonehenge, Bath, Windsor Castle) but we also got to just toot around and see London. We were there for the Queen Mother's 90th (I think) birthday celebration and that was really neat because it kind of took over the whole city while we were there. We didn't have mobile phones and we actually wrote letters to drop in the mail to send home. It was a cool trip.

Age 10 I think, in 1980-something, I won second prize in the school summer fair raffle. It was a pink Barbie set with some My Little Pony accessories. My older brother was almost crying with laughter at my misfortune.

The old lady running the prize-giving winked at me and told me to come back in half an hour.

The first prize winner hadn't claimed their haul, so old prize-giving-lady swapped the 1st & 2nd place labels over and gave me the first prize.

I absolutely loved my Action Man armoured personnel carrier set for years, almost as much as I loved annoying my brother by pretending to not let him play with it.

I won a webcam from (iirc) college humor as a high schooler in ~2000. You couldn't really do anything with them then, but I submitted a picture of myself to hotornot.com.

I got a 9.9. I used to be reasonably attractive as a teenager, but I'm not sure what they were smoking.

In any case, definitely not like that now.

My grandfather won a sweepstakes for a "boat and outboards motor" back in the 80s. The whole family was there for the delivery.

It turned out to be a rubber raft and a hand-crank propeller.

This was back when you'd see a sweepstakes registration with tear-off entries and a drop box in just about any store you'd enter. But if you read the fine print on the back of the entry, you were probably changing your long distance service when filling out the form.

80s were wild.

My mom won a rubber plant in a home goods expo raffle in 1986, it's still alive, I have one of it's offshoots as do my other siblings, this rubber tree has blown through all "estimates" of it's lifespan and is still going strong after almost 40 years.

Nothing big, but we won a plasma TV in a raffle back when they were brand new. The thing must have weighed 40 kg. It was like a big squooshed brick.

Contrary to some windfalls, we used it up to its untimely death a year or so ago. If it had been a million dollars, ehh, might have been a bit more reckless...

Last summer I won an instagram giveaway put on by a bunch of outdoor companies. I won a fixed gear bicycle, a skate board, a watch, a pair of sunglasses, a pair of shoes, and a surfboard. Considering where I live is 12 some odd hours from an ocean, I asked if there was a local charity they could donate the board to and they were able to set something up with a group that did water therapy for special needs kids.

I've also won a few early release movie showings, also from instagram giveaways.

Now all my ads are giveaways and I made a giveaway specific email to sign up for them.

I ended up winning one of those car raffles that are popular nowadays.

I only knew the site was "genuine" because a colleague at work sold his limited edition Golf to the site and I recognised it was up for raffle when I looked at another listing.

Couple months later, a close aunt passed and people were talking about belongings being shared out (uncle had what he wanted). I earn good money and asked about her car, but ultimately it was too much hassle so it went back to the lease company.

Week later, I got a call from the raffle site about a prize I'd won. Car or 15.5k tax free cash. Took the cash and am now using it as a deposit for a house. It's strange because up to that point, I'd never thought about insurance or anything else, but then with this car I was super anxious about repairs and insurance and I hadn't even won the car. Every raffle since is still a starry eyed "oooh that'd be awesome to drive", not a "******* hell how am I meant to insure that?!"

We won tickets to Six Flags St. Louis when I was young. Gas, food, hotel, etc wasn’t included so we still couldn’t afford to go. Kid me was pretty sad about it.

I won a furby from an oreo o's box contest when I was a kid and when it showed up, after it started learning away from furbish, it spoke german and not english.

This is hilarious timing because I won a raffle for the first time today.

I won a Rainier Beer branded golf bag from a grocery store display raffle. I saw it on display at Kroger a couple of months ago and wanted it badly, but I assumed nobody actually won these raffles, so I tried to buy it online. I wasn't able to find any.

This morning I got the email that I won the raffle and chatted with the Pabst beer marketing person to get everything sorted. Can't wait for it to arrive!

Spouse has won multiple TVs, an iMac, and just a plethora of iPads and stuff. All they do is sign up for every single drawing, webinar, contest, raffle...etc. It's work, but it's a numbers game.

I'm actually usually quite lucky, although I never enter much contests. As a kid we won a drawing contest with the whole family (cousins and all...) and won some Lego, then as a teen I won a CD-Rom with english lessons, as an adult got my girlfriend and I both chosen from a literal drawing of the names from a hat to visit the top of a windmill. After that tickets to Disneyland, and a bit later a week-end for 4 people to a French amusement park from a radio raffle, including a nice hotel and the train, all inclusive. I propably won 90% of the time, but I'm not a player, it's only when I feel like it.

I do sometimes sign up for giveaways but so rarely do I win anything that the two times I have are easily remembered.

First was way back in elementary school I won a digital watch at a family fun night in a raflle.

Second in high school I got some food at kfc and they had one of those giveaways where you enter a code online and can win a console and some other stuff. Ended up getting whatever the most recent Madden at the time was for ps3, which I didn't care about at all but my dad definitely enjoyed it.

As for my family my sister won an Xbox One at her post prom, which she sold for some extra money.

Many years ago I won a horror movie DVD from a review website by commenting on an article. I no longer have that DVD or even remember what movie it was, but turns out those comment entry contests do actually work.

Some years ago I won 1000 dollars on a lottery ticket.
I had my uncle with me and he bought a ticket as well. He ended up winning 5000 dollars.
It was late in the evening and I was running around trying to cash them.
Finally a large grocery store was able to come up with the cash!
My uncle would not let me go home until we cashed out those tickets.
Mission accomplished.

I won an a barebones professional workstation that had an Alpha CPU back in the late 90s. It was in the early days on Linux and some company was using the give away used to promote Linux in some way. It ended up costing me so much money (for the time since I was a poor college student) just to get it workable. It needed a SCSI-2 floppy drive just even get going with any of the available operating systems. I did eventually get it working and played around coding on it, but I probably should have found someone that could have made better use of it and donated it.

When I was in the Army I won a few 'soldier of the quarter' type competition things.

I was a winner for the Deparment of Defense's hot technologies contest for a thing I co-invented. The Army patented it, I get a nominal check every year since it was licensed out by a company.

I won a 'best presentation by a respiratory therapist' thing at a scientific conference.

I've been a co-author on other works that have one 'best #thing' at other scientific conferences.

Money wise, over my lifetime I think I've won like $70 on lottery tickets.

edit - not really winning, but I had several cans of monster that had somehow gone bad, and when I reached out, to compensate Monster sent me about 100 vouchers for free cans, so it felt like I won.

2nd edit - My wife's friend once won a 'bring 100 of your closest friends' to a local Six Flags. Friend lives 5 hours away, so we got to invite everyone we knew, and it was just our little crew in the entire park. Ruined normal visits to Six Flags for like a decade.

When I was younger I would enter contests and sweepstakes with reckless abandon, and I never won anything.

In terms of gambling, I have lost far more money than I have ever won, but one time in my mid 20s I won a small jackpot on a big fancy slot machine with one of those super eye-catching machines in the middle. I probably won about $100. In subsequent casino visits I've probably lost a total of $400 or so. Thankfully I'm not an addictive type so I consider that money spent on entertainment; I certainly had fun.

Then just a year or two ago I decided to randomly put in an entry for a giveaway and actually won. It was a Remarkable 2 tablet bundled with the accessories it had at the time. It was really nice but sadly not too useful to me. It would have been fantastic if I had got it a few years earlier while I was still taking college classes. I bring it out every once in a while because it still makes a great ebook reader.

In primary school we had a "guess the weight of the pumpkin" competition to raise money for charity, £1 a guess. My dad made a guess for the cause, and got it right within 100g. He was so annoyed because nobody in my family liked anything with pumpkin in it so it felt like a burden to him.

When I was about 5 my parents and their friends won the jackpot in the lottery. It was in the millions, but there were a lot of them so each £1 put in to the syndicate got about £150,000 I think. The most exciting part, at my age, was the night we found out. What a party!

I won a quilt in a library cakewalk when I was a kid. One of the old ladies crocheted it.

Kitchen remodel. In a hardware store, there was one of those little boxes where you fill out your address and phone number so they can sell it to telemarketers. Then they pull one out and grant them the prize of a new kitchen. My parents decided to give it a whirl and ended up winning a beautiful new kitchen. It was all destroyed in a fire a year later though.

My partner once won an iPad in a raffle. I dont participate anymore on those since I don't consider myself very lucky when it comes to lottery. However, once I won $5 in one of those gambling machines in Las Vegas and then proceeded to spend it on drinks. Best day ever!

I won a call-in contest from a TV station once for theme park tickets. Ended up having to give the tickets to my sister because I would have had to travel to the station in LA to get them and I wasn't working at the time, so I wasn't going to spend the gas on it. My brother-in-law picked them up because he was in the area more than I was.

Around Thanksgiving of 2003 I won a frozen turkey from the local flea market raffle. I was with my dad for that weekend and my mom didn’t know I entered so she had already bought a turkey. We got a call a on the house phone to come pick it up and ended up giving to to my grandma that year… her house is where we usually bring thanksgiving dinner and the family gets together lol. So we had two turkeys that year.

I used to sometimes watch those Adult Swim livestream shows when I was drunk. I wandered into Bloodfeast while they were in the middle of solving a crossword, got a right answer, and immediately won an Amazon Fire Cube (which I had absolutely no need for because I don't own a tv) because they just happened to have a giveaway going. I sent off for it anyway and gave it to my parents.

Think my mum won 500 quid once. That's the luckiest anyone in my family has ever been.

I won a giveaway for a mechanical keyboard years ago. It was on Reddit and the rules were to just post a comment and the highest voted comment would win. However, the person who won the keyboard was based in the UK and the organizer could only ship within the US. For whatever reason, instead of picking the second highest voted comment, they picked the lowest rated one. Lucky for me, I had the lowest rated comment. That keyboard was my first and I used it for like 6 years before getting a new one.

When I was a mailman I lived in an apartment on my mail route. The leasing company had a raffle for one year of free rent so every day I would fill out a dozen raffle tickets. I did this for about a month. This was in the late 90s and my rent was about $1200. I ended up winning and saved the money for a down payment on my first house. My mortgage payment was $900. That contest changed my life.

My brother won a BMX bike from a microwave dinner when we were kids, but my mom couldn't pay the $25 shipping. Same brother also won a jersey from a bottle of Mountain Dew that we think got stolen from the mail area outside the gate of the apartment complex.

As a kid won a LEGO building competition and won 100 Guilders (this was before the Euro). Of course, I bought more LEGO for that money (this really cool automated truck that could read barcodes, set 8479). Around that same time they were installing cable internet in our area and I won one year of free cable internet (plus free modem and installation) for my parents, it was great because we finally got rid of dial up! Aside from that I never really won anything for like 20 euros here and there through the lottery.

My sister almost won a huge price but he stopped her lottery subscription one month before the prize dropped. Her entire street won loads of money (250k per lottery ticket and more) but because she stopped paying she didn't win anything. If she hadn't stopped paying she would have won 500k Euro because she was playing with two tickets.

My aunt and uncle won the lottery TWICE. First they won 125k Euro and after that they won 250k two years later, it was insane.

Edit: I just remembered that I won the original Gears of War when it first came out. I didn't even have an Xbox 360 yet...

The only thing I ever won through luck was a book from a tv show giveaway.

I was watching it with a friend and had just remarked that I almost never watch this show, when they announced my name as the winner on the programme. My friend thought I was a great big liar and when the book came the mail delivery left it where it got rained on.

When I was somewhere around 8-10 years old, I won a ~$10 gift certificate to a tobacco shop during a basketball exhibition with some of the UNC players, which sounds like the most North Carolina thing ever. I actually used it for some pipe tobacco that we sent to my uncle, so it wasn't completely useless.

I have won a couple of small contests. I got a t-shirt from a now-defunct web store (Game Music Bundle), and I won a satchel and pen from a contest Rubik's (as in Cube). Nothing too flashy, but fun nonetheless!

Not long after getting my first job and moving out of my parents house I was kinda poor. House-poor, new-job-poor, etc. My dad bought some ticket to a local Sportsman's Club fundraiser and I went with him since my mom had zero desire to go. I had no money to bid on anything or whatever so my dad too a little pity on me and bought me a raffle ticket for a new Mossberg Over/Under Shotgun. I ended up winning it and my dad got mad at me because he said the ticket was a "pity purchase" for me.

Next year, same outdoorsman raffle he said he's not buying me any more fucking tickets so I bought one for myself. And won another shotgun.

A few years later we bought the calendar raffles (they sell 1000 individually numbered calendars and 1 day a week the pick-3 lotto numbers drawn on a certain day determines who wins the gun for that week). He won a new rifle.

I worked in the City of London a loooong time ago back when everyone commuted in by train. We were out drinking with work at a big rowdy pub - it was a huge gallery style pub with about 3 levels all overlooking the bar like a cheesy Kung Fu movie but with besuited bankers. They had a business card prize draw where you could win a Guinness fridge. I joked with my mates saying 'That's such a stupid prize - someone will have to take that thing aaaall the way home on the train! What a joke!' I threw my card in the bowl anyway and we got to drinking..

Fast forward several hours and they're doing the draw. The whole pub rallies around the gallery while the landlord drew the names. 'Scott!!'... Silence.. He'd left for the day. Then he drew a second card. 'Billy!' Welp - that was me.

I had to get the thing back on the train. It was exactly as little fun as I suspected - heavy, bulky and stupid. But I used it for about 5 years before I had to get rid of it. Fun times.

Some years ago the official Battlebots Twitter had a contest going where if you replied with your favorite Battlebot you could win tickets to the live show. I replied with "Beta" because I love big smashy hammers, and firmly thought that nothing would happen. But the hammer bot gods smiled upon me that day, and I wound up with Battlebots in my DMs at the end of the contest.

It was only tickets to the event and not airfare or lodging, and I don't live in LA (where it was at the time), but luckily I had family there. So I was able to go. I don't remember exactly which season it was now, but during a match with RotatoR you can see the camera go past me and my cousin in the front row. She's got green hair and I'm holding a giant pink sign I don't think you can read but it said something like "Keep Calm and Kill Bots" or something like that. I made it pretty hastily in the car on the way over, lol.

To this day, one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me. I still have and wear the shirt I bought there regularly.

My work, at work parties, would have things like how many miles did we put on our delivery truck this year. Gross sale totals. Or how many candies in the jar.

I won at least 3/4 times every year for three years. I last won a big wooden deer planter made out of tree branches. It fits in really well in my shade garden.

After decades of them stealing money from family and friends, a family member did end up winning the jackpot at a casino. Over a million dollars, and yet I still don't think it was enough to bring them up to 0 for their lifetime net worth in gambling.

I won a luggage bag set at a school raffle once... so that was nice.

I have never won anything very significant. A couple of years ago I won a book giveaway on Goodreads, and got an advance copy of Neal Stephenson’s ‘Termination Shock’, so that was kinda cool.

I actually won another book giveaway on Goodreads in 2017 and they never sent me the prize!