Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993 TAG: 9303250436
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GRAND PRIZE WIN STOKES CONTEST FEVER
In 1992, Kelly Howard spent between $700 and $1,000 on postage stamps for sweepstakes entries alone.In that same year, one of those entries - valued at only 29 cents and the price of one 3-by-5 card - won him a $24,000 Ranger Trail boat.
Was it worth it?
"Yeah, it was now," Howard says, standing beside his new blue-and-purple speckled boat, the same kind used by fisherman Roland Martin in his Nashville Network fishing show last year.
It was also just the encouragement Howard needed to keep slapping those postage stamps on his entries - as few as 10 a day, as many as 80 a day - every day.
"I want a [Jeep] Cherokee to pull it with," says Howard, stricken by the grand-prize fever. Already, he has entered two contests offering the Jeep as a grand prize. His status, though, is unknown, which is usually the case unless he wins.
This is Howard's third year on the sweepstakes circuit. His prize closet is filled with third-place awards such as NFL towels and Frisbees. There are also a Nintendo game and a remote-control car topping the stash. He even won a Sunkist rubber raft the same week the boat came. (You can guess which was the grand prize.)
But winning is winning, and that's why Howard keeps entering.
It all started with the likes of the Publishers Clearing House and American Family Publishers multimillion-dollar sweepstakes.
Howard says the thing that really hooked him on the mail-away contests was the number of small prizes his mail carrier brought to his house soon after he first started entering.
"You win the smaller prizes and you know you made it to the draw. I kept getting those little ones, and I knew I'd get it" eventually. The "it" came when he picked up his boat from a dealer on Smith Mountain Lake - almost free, save its local property tax price tag.
Today, it doesn't matter whose picture is on the envelope; if it doesn't ask for money, he sends it in. If you can send more than one, Howard will. He once sent 180 entries for a Duracell $100,000 contest. (He lost, unable to recoup his $52.20 in stamps.)
Howard has sent entries off every day since 1992 began. When he first started, though, he entered contests "on and off." But when prizes started showing up in his mailbox, filling out sweepstakes forms became an everyday affair.
He has his entry routine down to a science. Well, more of an "assembly line," says his fiance, Lisa Hawley. Together, they spend at least an hour every evening filling out 3-by-5 cards - usually in all capital letters, handwritten, to the "T." Then they stuff them in No. 10 envelopes, as instructed, addressing them, too, by hand (just in case).
When it comes to mailing off his entries, he separates those going to the same contest, so they're mailed one day at a time up till the deadline. That way they arrive in different mailbags, and don't wind up in a lump, possibly in the bottom of a 2-ton heap of mail.
Howard says he never sends money, and stays as far away from scams as he can. In the beginning, he even suspected his boat was a "gimmick."
"I was waiting for them to call me for my credit card number or something," he remembers. But they didn't.
Howard is also wary of contests that require you to check a box if you purchased its product. "I've been skeptical of [contests] where you have to mark `No' on the outside," he says. His boat is proof that you don't have to buy to win.
Howard enters many sweepstakes through coupon sections in Sunday newspapers or through friends who bring him theirs. Others he enters through a contest entry magazine he receives, or through the "junk mail" he gets.
Then he waits and waits, all the while filling out more index cards and envelopes. The wait to learn if he's a winner is usually six months for smaller prizes, and a month for the bigger ones, he says. But the months don't seem half as long as his mail carrier's day off.
"I hate Sundays and holidays," Howard says. Sorting through his mail is the one thing that will reward him for his efforts; Howard's mailbox is stuffed with a prize about once a month.
If you're now ready to scramble for that sweepstakes entry you tossed last night, Howard offers this advice for the contest entry novice: Follow the three "P's" - "practice, perseverance and postage."