Shaw's Wish Big, Win Big Holiday Giveaway

Shaw's in the Northeast is running a promotion in which, with each purchase, they give away "game markers" or "game pieces" that you must match to a game board to win.

There are several large/major prizes available: two $250K prizes, four $50K prizes, ten $25K prizes and ten $10K prizes. But, you can win such a prize only if you collect one "rare game marker" and one "semi-rare game marker." This being so unlikely for any one person, it seems that Shaw's has designed the contest to make it very difficult to win.

Through the power of the internet, let's force Shaw's to award every one of these prizes!

Here is the game board. The official rules state that more than 70 million game pieces have been printed, but only one "rare" piece exists for each major prize. (Note: the game board gives a broken link for the rules.)

The hard-to-find markers/pieces are listed below. Each asterisk * next to a marker means that someone has already contacted me with that rare/semi-rare marker in hand, looking for its match:

  For the $250K cash prize: S604* and S605 [Found 1/15/2012]

  For the $50K cash prize: S608 and S610* [Found 1/15/2012]

  For the $50K vehicle prize: S612* and S615 [Found 1/20/2012]

  For the $25K cash prize: S618 and S619* [Found 1/21/2012]

  For the $25K vehicle prize: S622* and S626 [Found 1/21/2012]

  For the $10K vacation prize: S627 and S631* [Found 1/16/2012]

(Obviously, it's a good bet that the pieces that have already been found are the semi-rare markers.)

If you have found one of these game markers, email me at teller AT mit.edu so that (perhaps for a small cut of the prize) I can put you in touch with the holder of the matching game marker. Make sure to fix the email address above by replacing AT with @ before you press send.

Good luck! Best – Seth Teller.