PCF Raffles: A One Year Snapshot (2 Viewers)

[dew4au]

Yes. though Im assuming there is an inflection point for number of entries as well. I doubt many $20 raffles would go off which required 500 entries.

The outlier for most entries was a raffle that required 200 entries at $12 apiece. It fired.

 

[Chbyfngr]

The obvious answer is lower price = more chance of success.

Thinking along those lines... I wonder if the larger value sets would benefit from a larger total ticket pool. Most are capped around 100. I don't think I've seen anything over. Just for example sake, I think if @Chbyfngr would have had the Bahamia set @ 200 tickets for $18 a piece he would have gotten a lot more action. For me personally, the price has to feel completely insignificant given the potential total gains. (I know that a single ticket vs total set value is always "worth it" if you win... but obviously we all have that threshold of when it feels right to gamble.)

The people who are happy to drop $100 on each raffle will still get the same equity, but people with their pockets sewn shallower by their wives and kids and circumstance will be able to jump in too, at least on average, more often.

I may be way off base here, just thinking out loud.

When I run another, I'm going to trim the set down a bit and reduce the price. Still probably going to wait a little while.

 

[dew4au]

I'm, trying to get info for all of 2016, but it seems my search is stopping at 100 results. Does anyone know how to run an advanced search that returns more than 100 results? Maybe a mod can run it and not be limited and then just send me a link to the results. @Trihonda @David O @Payback

 

[RainmanTrail]

Awesome work @dew4au!

I've had a few successful raffles of some rare, high valued sets in the past with higher ticket prices than average. Several people have commented about them, some privately, some publicly, and have either criticized me for holding them, or have PMed me asking how to run a successful raffle. To me, setting up a successful raffle is mostly just common sense. Ask yourself, "Do I have something that a lot of people would love to have but few could actually afford? What's a realistic market value for what I have? How much money are people likely to want to gamble with for what you're offering? What's the demand like for the chips I'm looking to sell?" If you are honest with yourself about those questions, you should be able to gauge whether or not a raffle is an appropriate way to sell your chips.

 

[RainmanTrail]

If we classified the raffles as something like these options below, it would probably be one of the most telling factors in whether or not a set will sell.

• "highly coveted expensive rare sets" (TRKs, Dunes, Donkwoods, Wynn Tourney, etc)
• "large sets that are otherwise easy to obtain" (like PCAs, Horseshoe Clevelands, or Paulson Top Hat & Cane)
• "random racks of chips" (as in, "I couldn't find any buyers for this random rack of undesireable $1s, so I'll try a raffle instead")
• "Charity raffles"
• "rare singles" (like authentic Rounders, or Binions tourney sets)

The most telling of course would be the ratio between raffle valuation to market valuation of the chips themselves (e.g., trying to raffle a set of chips for 50 tickets @ $20 each yields a raffle valuation of $1000, but the chips would only sell for $500 at auction or as a dibs listing in the classifieds, yielding a raffle to market ratio of 2 to 1).
As your analysis shows, and as common sense would dictate, expensive ticket raffles are less likely to go (think bergs and his $100 per ticket Dunes raffle that never had a chance in hell), but I don't think that the number of tickets would really have a measurable effect on how likely a raffle is to occur once you've controlled for other variables. Any effect it has is likely just correlation with other variables that matter more (e.g., ticket prices and overall valuation). You could sell 1000 tickets at $1 ea pretty easily, allowing people to choose how much they want to gamble with. But turn that $1000 raffle into 20 tickets at $50 ea, and you'll have a much harder time making it go through.