OV9

I entered one of the Bridge Classic Cars auctions ages ago (not even sure what it was for - maybe an Elise?), so I receive their "early bird offer" emails. Most of the stuff they have doesn't interest me, but I was keeping an eye yesterday on the 944S2 auction as after-a-few-beers-mik thought last week "oh that's very similar in spec to our old car" and bought 4 tickets. I loved ours, but even I don't want another one. Particularly in an almost identical spec



Aaaanyway - I purchased at the early bird price of £5 per ticket. "Standard" ticket price is £6.

They sold most of the available 6000 tickets - 5332 to be exact. The "early bird option" appears to be pretty popular, with around 1/3 of tickets sold on day1, so that give an average of £5.66 per ticket = £31,214. For a car worth around £12k, that they - as a dealer - probably paid less than £10k for

I realise this is the model that all of these "win a veehickle" type sites utilise, and obviously you only make good money if the tickets sell well (their other "2 Golfs" auction drawn at the same time sold only 3800 of the 7000 tickets available), but that there's some pretty decent margins.

(edit: If the 944 had sold as poorly as their 2-Golfs auction, it'd still have yielded around £18,435 )

People love raffles at the moment, and a lot of creators are getting on that too. I know a farmer who raffles meat boxes every month, they contain about £500 worth of fresh meat straight from their own farm and tickets are £5 each. They sell wayyy more than 100 tickets for each box. So even accounting for admin costs of running the raffle there is big profits.

This guy has taken car "raffles" to a whole new level.
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/3 ... rking-spot

This year he bought a Konigsegg Jesko.

Of course is now fighting the tax office etal for alleged massive fraud.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-01/ ... /105239016

Loads of people doing it - saturated market and some are getting into trouble over it (see Level Up Giveaways) - but I assume because people are trying to do it without owning anything beforehand.

Raffle off a car/item you don't own, if sell enough tickets, buy the car. If it doesn't, refund.

One of the property ones got in trouble recently because they didn’t sell enough tickets for the million-pound house. I think they gave the winner £10k instead. Which is fantastic as a windfall, but a slap in the face when you bought tickets based on a 100x bigger return

Done right there’s definitely a chance to make serious money. Not sure how long it will go on for, but seems plenty of people willing to spend £20 to win something.

I think at first a lot of people thought they were dodgy or fake, but I ‘know’ ( through the internet ) a few people who have won things.

I must admit I’ve bought a few tickets for a couple of cars, but very selective about it. But they do all sorts now, I watch a couple of RC car YouTube channels and they’re often ‘giving away’ a bundle of cars or a cash alternative. Even better for them because I expect most of the prizes are donated to them for the exposure and a review in the main video.

The wife won an Apple Watch and also a Swarovski crystal advent calendar which was an expensive thing.

As long as people don’t go mad, it’s not a bad thing.

Dave!

Exactly. All about moderation.

I know people who’ve put 2 a week on the lottery for 20+ years and never won more than a handful of £10s

integrale_evo wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:41 pm Exactly. All about moderation.

I know people who’ve put 2 a week on the lottery for 20+ years and never won more than a handful of £10s

My ex b-i-l has put £40 a week on for the last few years, despite having to frequently borrow money to pay the mortgage, they went to a financial advisor, who actually broke professionalism and asked “what the actual fuck are you doing??” And he still puts it all on

I have been noticing these lately with sheds presented as "modern classics" i.e. 986 Boxsters and Jag XK8s - cars worth £5-7k but with ticket sales of up to £20-30k. My guess is that often these are ones with naff histories that no one sensible would buy but will chuck a tenner at for a ticket.