You don’t get to choose what luck brings you. My sweepstakes log includes a $199.95 dog chime, a Sour Patch Kids fanny pack, and a designer freezer bag built for ice cream. Some prizes became part of my life, and the rest moved on to people who love them. Everything gets used, gifted, donated, or sold. Nothing is trashed. That’s the deal when you plant seeds: you pick the planting, and the harvest picks itself.
Anyone who enters sweepstakes for long enough ends up with a shelf of objects no store would ever have sold them, because no version of them would have walked in asking. The full list of what’s landed on mine since 2005 is on my winnings page. This post is about the strangest arrivals, the ones that stuck, and where everything else goes.
What do you actually win in sweepstakes?
Whatever the sponsor is giving away, which is a different thing entirely from what you’d pick. A sampler from my log:
- A dog chime, valued at $199.95. A fancy doorbell-training chime for dogs. Of all the objects in all the warehouses, luck sent me that one.
- A Sour Patch Kids fanny pack. Candy-brand merch in wearable form.
- A Rebecca Minkoff freezer bag. A designer-label insulated bag, made for carrying ice cream, from a Magnum promotion. Fashion, but for frozen dessert. I didn’t know this object existed until it was mine.
- A Blackstone Griddle Grill. We use this thing all the time, but would have probably never purchased one on our own.
- Plus a Burger King bucket hat, an Autobot lunchbox, a branded ice mold, a plush kangaroo, and a Coke polar bear, across the years.
None of these were on any wish list. That’s what makes them fun. A prize you chose is shopping with extra steps. A prize you didn’t choose is a little piece of the world you’d never have met otherwise.
The prize that stuck hardest wasn’t even for me
In 2017 I won a Yeti Hopper Flip 12, a soft-sided cooler that costs more than anyone in this house would ever spend on a cooler. My husband takes it every single time he goes fishing. It’s something he’d never have purchased, and he uses it and loves it every time he’s on the boat.
That’s the quiet magic of unchosen prizes. The griddle grill and the pizza oven I won pull their weight in the kitchen too, but the Yeti is the cleanest example, because it found its person on the first try and its person wasn’t me. Luck doesn’t read the entry form that closely. It just delivers to your address and lets the household sort it out.
What do you do with prizes you don’t want?
This is the question I get, and my answer has four doors and no trash can:
- The right person gets it. Gift giving is my love language, the giving side, not the receiving side. Winning things I didn’t know existed means I get to hand a friend something they’d never have found either. The unique stuff is the best stuff to give.
- The prize closet handles last-minute gifts. More than once a birthday has snuck up on me and the answer was already in there, new in its packaging, waiting.
- Donations take a share. What doesn’t have an obvious person goes to someone who can use it.
- A couple of things got sold. Once a prize is yours, it’s yours.
And yes, there’s still a closet with prizes in it, waiting for the right person to reveal themselves. I’m not going to pretend the system runs at 100 percent. But everything gets used, gifted, donated, or sold eventually. Nothing is trashed.
The one prize this never worked for still stings: a $5,000 trip I couldn’t use and couldn’t give away, because it was non-transferrable. It reached nobody. A dog chime can find its dog. A locked-down trip can’t, and that difference taught me more about entering than any win did.
Why enter for things you’d never buy?
Because the not-choosing is the point. I wrote in do people actually win sweepstakes about the posture entering gives me, and the unchosen prizes are that posture in object form. Serendipity, delivered in packaging, sometimes wearing a candy logo.
There’s a line worth holding here, though. I don’t enter for prizes that demand something my life can’t give, like trips and outings. A fanny pack asks nothing of me. It can sit in a closet for a year and then make one specific friend laugh until she cries, and the only cost was an entry form. Low-stakes prizes get to be pure surprise, because claiming them takes an address and nothing else.
Today’s action
Open your own version of the prize closet. Everyone has one: a drawer or shelf holding something new-ish that’s clearly meant for someone else.
Pick one thing and get it to its person this week. You’ll feel the exact lift I’m describing, and you didn’t even have to win anything first.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of prizes do people win in sweepstakes?
Everything the sponsors make or promote: gift cards, food, tech, apparel, branded merch, and genuinely odd objects like dog chimes and designer freezer bags. Big prizes are rare. The everyday texture of winning is small, specific, and frequently strange, which is a feature once you stop expecting to choose.
What should you do with a sweepstakes prize you don’t want?
Give it, donate it, or sell it. My order of operations: think of the person who’d love it, check whether it solves an upcoming gift, then donate what’s left over. A prize you pass along still did its job. It gave you a win and gave someone else the thing.
Can you sell sweepstakes prizes?
Generally yes, once the prize has been awarded to you and it’s your property. I’ve sold a couple of mine. Check the official rules for anything unusual, and remember the prize’s stated value is what counts for taxes whether you keep it or sell it.
Is it wrong to regift a prize?
I’d argue the opposite. Handing a prize to the person it was clearly meant for is the best ending a random object can get. Giving is how I show love, and sweepstakes keep the shelf stocked with things nobody could buy on purpose.
Doesn’t this contradict only entering for what you can claim?
No, and the difference is what the prize demands. A trip demands travel, dates, and capacity, so I filter those out before entering. A small object demands a mailing address. Low-demand prizes can afford to be surprises. High-demand prizes can’t, and I learned that one the expensive way.
The short version
Sweepstakes prizes are unchosen by design: dog chimes, fanny packs, freezer bags, and the occasional cooler that becomes a fishing trip regular. Keep what fits, give the rest to the people it was secretly for, donate or sell what’s left, and trash nothing. You pick the planting, not the harvest.
A tool I built
Side Hustle Garden
Log every side hustle payment and watch it knock out your monthly bills, smallest first.
Plant your first dollar →I run an affiliate program on the tools I build. Approved affiliates earn 20% on what their referrals pay, for up to a year. US only for now. See the program →
Related reading
- What a Real Sweepstakes Win Actually Looks Like
- My Real Sweepstakes Win Rate After 1,807 Logged Entries
- The Giveaways With the Smallest Crowds
Every entry is a seed, and part of the fun is having no idea what will grow. Somewhere out there is an object you’ve never heard of with your name on it, or better, with a friend’s name on it. Plant something today and let it surprise you.
