Contest: Win Puff's Stuff

It's feeling like contest time again in the Valley...it's been a while since our last carnival booth attraction.

CONTEST PRIZES:

1 - (super duper) Grand Prize: $100
1 - (almost had it) First Prize: $50
2 - (hey I still won) Second Prize: $25

Four prizes will be awarded, to the four closest guesses without going over.

Prizes will be issued in the form of a coupon code. Pick whatever products you'd like, and use the code to reduce your purchase by the prize amount. You may use the prize amount for products and shipping.

Guess my weight.....no...that would lead to me consuming more adult beverages ...... spelling bee ..... ? ..... nope .... loudest yodel ..... ? ..... hmm. The guess the baby's birth and sex game won't be until October(ish).....

Remember the contest we held a while ago asking you how many quarters were in the whiskey bottle? You guys got way closer than I thought you would....and when it all ended I was surprised to hear about the methods used to guess. I would have just picked a number out of the air...but ECF doesn't roll that way.

Simple carnival booth contest, and I was hearing about volumes and math. So break out your sliderules and the ancient wisdom of Pythagoras. I'm sure some random sampling of typical pocket change will help too. (Why do I have the feeling I'm going to hear about distribution and random sampling....?...)

Here's the new bottle. In the time it took to collect nearly $800 in quarters the rest of the change was dumped into this 5 gallon water bottle (yes, I snagged it from the gulf when I was there, don't tell Aqua Cool).

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The contents will be emptied into a CoinStar (like) machine at my credit union. Their report of the face value will be the winning amount, and will be substantiated by a printout from the bank.

Any items that may have found their way into the bottle that aren't, by definition, coins....will be excluded. I don't have anywhere near the time required to figure out the face value of half a rubber band, two condoms, and a cashew. Nothing's been intentionally added to the bottle to take up space, but odds are there are a few items in there that aren't coins. Keep that in mind when you guess.

Eligible contents of the bottle are US coins...pennies, nickels, and dimes mostly. There is a possibility of half-dollars and dollar coins in there as well, but there shouldn't be too many of those. This is a few years worth of typical pocket change...so however often you receive an odd coin as change is probably as often as I do. There should be no quarters in the bottle, with the exception of an accidental few...the quarters were all put into a different bottle.

Got enough hints? Simple? To crystal clear-ify.

CONTEST RULES:

1. Open to anyone with a US mailing address that wants to participate. Sorry, but the only overseas addresses we can service are US Military APO/FPO. We're more than happy to fill out customs forms for our US Military serving overseas.

2. Admin, mods, people that can't win prizes because of their position with ECF...all's fair game. If you've won before, you're welcome to try again. No purchase necessary.

3. Guess the face value (if there is a magic $8,000 rare penny it will be counted as $0.01) contained in the bottle.

4. One guess per person, winners will be closest to the amount in the bottle without going over.

5. Contest opens now, winner will be announced Sunday July 24, 2011 at 9PM Pacific Standard time.

6. Entries must be made here on ECF's forum. Last time I took entries from 6 different places and it was way too confusing with screen names, email addresses, etc.

(If you're not a member of ECF, it only takes a handful of posts in the "New Members" section before you can post in the supplier forums. It may seem like a pain, but the internet is the wild west. Spammers are much less likely to return when they realize there's a minimum post count to get out of the newbie section.)

Good luck, and happy July from Valley Vapor.
Dave