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Winning stuff from bottle caps. (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/nostalgia@lemmy.ca
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Apparently the story goes that this 20-25 year old bottle was found in 2016(?), which went viral online, and Nintendo wound up sending the guy an unopened SNES anyway. (Plus a bunch of other stuff)

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[–] 129 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

Just the whole contests being offline and straightforward in general.

Nowadays, it's "enter the code on our website, view the ads, give us your name and email so we can send you more ads and sell your info to other advertisers. Also, you're not a winner. Buy more [product] and try again!'

I miss the days when your bottle cap said "You won a free 20oz bottle" and you could just hand that to the cashier as if it were cash.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I worked in a grocery store during these promotions. Only the winning bottles had anything printed under the cap, so you could hold an unopened bottle up to the light to see. If you saw text, it was a winner, and I would stash those in the beer cooler for break time.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    In the summer of 1980 RC Cola was giving cash prizes from the bottle caps of glass bottles. None of it was serious money. I remember five, ten, and twenty five cent winners with maybe a dollar thrown in there every once in a while.

    It was pretty exciting for me to find a quarter under my bottle cap. That would buy a candy bar at the time, so sugar rush bonus!

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I love the idea of that, but it does not sound very sanitary at all lol.

    Edit: Actual quarter or something you could redeem for a quarter?

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Oh no. The amount was printed on the underside of the bottle cap. You had to pull out that little plastic gasket to see it. Then you'd exchange the bottle cap for whatever coin from the cashier.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That makes much more sense, lol. But also, I grew up in the 80s, so the crazy way also checks out.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It would check out even more if Coke had changed their receipe (let me finish) to reintroduce cocaine back into the formula.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    I did always wonder the logistics behind that. Did those businesses get reimbursed from the contest runners? I like the idea of them trading in their piles of caps for cash

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes, you can find dollar off coupons in stores and the fine print says the merchant will be reimbursed

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    When I worked at a chain grocery store, a manager would routinely close a register to balance the till, but also remove the coupons which were supposed to be compared to the computer system for accuracy, but mostly just got shoved into an envelope to send in to a regional place to sort by manufacturer and claim the $$$.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    That seems like a "only at participating stores" sort of thing, wbere the local owner eats the loss in exchange for more people in the store.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    It was actually more profitable for the business to accept the bottle cap because the vendors accepted the bottle caps back and gave them an additional eight cents.

    I'm sure that doesn't seem like a lot but I mean hey you get an extra couple of bucks you make some kids happy everyone wins. Most businesses typically run on net 30 payments anyway so it's not like it's a huge ordeal for them to hold on to a couple of bottle caps for a week.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    One time I went on a weird streak of one free soda winning me another free soda. It kinda freaked me out, hah.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I had a really long steak of that with scratchers lottery tickets. I bought five $1 scratchers, won a couple dollars, so bought scratchers with them, and just kept doing that. At some point, I cashed in my original $5 because I'd won more than that on a round, but it was a freakishly long streak and I was sad when it ended.

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