Many casinos have monthly drawings for cars. If you won, but didn't want the vehicle, would you be ahead taking the vehicle and reselling it or settle for the lesser cash amount the casino offers in lieu of the car?
As described in The Frugal Gambler, in late 1994, Jean Scott received three free nights at the Stardust and 500 tickets for a January 1995 drawing -- nine of ten tickets pulled received cash prizes from $500 to $1,000. The tenth, the first ticket drawn, won a car.
Jean had been sick in bed all that day, but since you had to be present to win, she dragged herself down to the casino. She didn't have much hope for the drawing, since hundreds of people were milling around and countless thousands of tickets jammed the drum.
But then, to her vast surprise, her ticket was drawn first and she won a 1995 Mercury Mystique. The car came with $3,000 in cash to help defray the taxes.
Jean also had the choice of taking a cash buyout for $9,000.
But Jean, being Jean, wanted to learn if it would be worth her while to take the car and sell it. She visited the dealer from which the Stardust bought the Mercury for the drawing and asked how much she could get for selling it back.
"The dealer gave us a price and we took it," Jean remembered when we asked her about it in pursuit of this answer. "After taxes, we won $10,200 by taking the car and the cash, then selling it back to the dealer, $1,200 more than if we'd taken the cash. And we would do it the same way today!!"
We suppose you could try to sell your car privately, perhaps on Craig's List or the like. You'd probably come out ahead in the end, but getting there might take awhile and turn into a hassle, especially if it's a much more expensive car than Mercury Mystiques were in the mid-1990s. For our part, we'd probably do it the way Jean and Brad did: Turn right around and sell it back to the dealer.
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