The (half) year in sweeps

[faithellen]

Prompted by my convo with dawntreader90, I got off my tush and reorganized my 2006 wins by month. Here they are:

January
Killian's Irish Red Zone Sweepstakes (ARV $1000) GP

February
3 Hallmark DVDs (ARV unknown)
105 2-liter bottles of Coke (ARV $156.45)
3 OPI Mustang nail polishes (ARV $22.50)
SNOG t-shirt from BBC America (ARV unknown)

March
WB NFL Super Bowl Collection I-XXX Collector’s DVD set (ARV $164)
Turkey Hill cow beanie (ARV $5)
Quart size Ziploc 2-zipper bag (ARV unknown)
Heineken - MidAtlantic Basketball Sweepstakes (ARV $2,600) GP
Hershey's Mexican Independence Day prepaid phone card (ARV $5)

April
3 Nair product samples (ARV $1.02)
Apple gift certificate (ARV $100)
Luggageguy.com gift certificate (ARV $20)
Red Dress pin (ARV $2.50)

May
iTunes download (ARV $1)
Napster download (ARV $1)
Digital code to CSTV.com or CSTVfanstore.com (ARV $5)
3 Hallmark DVDs (ARV unknown)
Box of merci chocolates (ARV $5.99)
Dole Fruit Juice - Two MovieCash movie passes (ARV $24)

June
15 song downloads from CONNECT (ARV $14.85)
Blockbuster gift certificate (ARV $20)
"Adventures of Superboy: The Fourth Season" (ARV $39.98)
Chock full o'Nuts travel mug or three bags of New York Classics coffee (ARV unknown)
$2000 towards a Peter Deilmann river cruise (ARV $2000)
Two tickets to winner's choice of Nascar Busch Series race during the 2006 season and gift pack (ARV $205)
Krups Home Café Coffee Maker (ARV $150)

Since I started in January 2005, I've entered 4,767 sweeps. Of those, 1,711 expired in 2006 (but I may have entered them in 2005), and I am currently entered in 645 of them. Of the 645, 210 are daily or 24-hour entries. I figure I enter about 4 days a week, for about 2 hours at a time.

So far in 2006, that's $6543.29 in winnings, including 2 trips (we'll probably take the cruise in 2007). 2005 brought $4880.66 in prizes (also including 2 trips).

Not bad for a geeky little hobby!

Comments

[snipeyhead.livejournal.com]

*wow*

[emalia.livejournal.com]

Are there tax consequences for any of these things?

[faithellen]

For the larger items, yes. I believe the threshold is $600 -- below that, the company doesn't have to report anything to the IRS. But, I'll only pay taxes on the actual value -- the two trips I won last year originally were valued at $8000, but they ended up being a little over $2K each, so the tax burden was smaller.

The cruise will be taxed in the year that I take it, and they're knocking an additional $1K off the price of the stateroom, so my tax burden will be $2K and the value will be $3K.

All told, though, the amount we pay in taxes is far less than we could have done the same trip on our own, so it's worth it. I have the option of turning down any prize as well, so there's no automatic obligation.

[dawntreader]

what does GP stand for?

the geek in me says "gold pieces." hehe.

[faithellen]

Heh. Grand prize. :)