Bear with me here.

The last few weeks, I've been learning about the buying and selling of bourbon, mostly online for the selling, in private facebook groups.  It's basically gambling.  I've been wondering about doing this for Lego.

What they do is the owner of a bottle posts it for sale, say Sunday morning.  Ten different people buy a number, 0 through 9, for a stated price.  Each buyer of a number sends money to the seller via Paypal or Venmo.  Then that evenings Illinois Lottery Fireball number is the winner.  The seller and winner exchange address, and the seller pays for shipping.  So the buyers take a 1 in 10 shot they'll get the bottle(s) for 10% of it's value.  Alternatively, the winner can choose to take 85% of the pot, and seller keeps the bottle and the 15%.

I'll post an example.

 

In this listing, the drawing is the Evening Fireball Pick 3 on March 27.  Two bottles for sale, the "OWA" and "Stagg".

One number is $22.  Two numbers from the same buyer are $21 each.  CONUS included means the seller ships anywhere in the US.  85% BB means the winner can take 85% of the cash rather than the two bottles.  Then the pay method.

Below that is the 10 numbers available, and a few have been purchased, as indicated by the initials of the buyer.

So the seller is going to get about $220, and the winner is going to get two bottles of bourbon, worth about $220, for either $22 or $42 depending on how many numbers they bought.  Or, the winner could take 85% of 220. Then the seller keeps 15%, both bottles, and can sell them again.

Sounds like a recipe to get a run in with the law if anyone finds out you are running a gambling operation ....

Doing that with a group of friends, sure. Doing that with anonymous strangers on the internet, not so sure.

In all reality, it's the same as similar illegal activities, like NCAA pools for money, fantasy football, etc. No one really cares, and no one is getting prosecuted for it, unless it's an extreme circumstance.

There is a Lego Market on Reddit for this exact thing. Seems to do well and s moderated. They post a set, its value, the max buy-in per ticket and the max tickets allowed for purchase to match the value of the set. Then they run the raffle. I think it would be cool to do here if there was enough interest.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lego_raffles/

Edited March 27, 20205 yr by CosmicSpeed

Strictly speaking from a gaming law standpoint (I can only speak about Nevada, but many state regs are written against Nevada models), a game is considered gambling if it has 3 elements: prize, chance and consideration. Prize, check. Chance, check since there is no skill associated with the outcome. Consideration - here's where it gets sticky. If the 'value' of the prize exceeds the total of the amount wagered entries that would likely be considered (illegal) gambling. So if someone sells $1300 in tickets to win $1000 of Lego and 'pockets' the $300 the seller could be running an illegal game. And interstate gambling raises another major issue. If the proceeds go to charity it's a different story. If we did a contest here we could add an element of skill, like predicting the biggest price appreciation of a chosen set in a series or predictions the next IDEAS winner.