A spin like this hasn’t happened in 25 years
The Showcase Showdown and its big spinning wheel might not be the last stop on the show, but the drama of chance and the crazy reactions to the contestants success might make it the most exciting part of The Price Is Right. But on Monday, the excitment level went through the roof as everything lined up perfectly for all three contestants (Manfred, Cathryn, and Jessica), leading to an event so rare the show hadn’t seen anything like it in 25 years.
Not one, not two, but all three contestants ended up totaling a dollar on their two spins. Each lucky spinner recieved the standard bonuses for getting a buck in their spins: a $1,000 cash prize and another bonus spin that would net the contestant an additional $10,000 if they landed on $.05 or $.15, or $25,000 if they managed to land square on the $1.00 spot (Nobody got as lucky on the bonus spins, sadly).
But because there was no winner, they had to go through the whole exercise again to determine who advances to the final round. Manfred, the gentleman in the yellow shirt, was the lucky one, and he ended up winning the final showcase as well, netting himself a new car and a cruise.
Kudos to the contestants for being such good sports about their shared success. I have to imagine that not everyone would be as gracious as Cathryn was when she cheered on her competitors, knowing that their subsequent success would send them all back to a tiebreaker.
That said, $1,000, viral video stardom, and place in The Price Is Right pantheon are solid consolation prizes for the runners-up.
When the madness went down, host Drew Carey wondered aloud if anything like this had happened in the show’s 45-year history. It turned out it had. Way back in 1989, two contestants lucked out with $1.00 spins and a third tallied up a $.70 and a $.30, resulting in the same unlikely scenario.
Check out the retro clip here:
Anyone with a stats background want put some odds on the likelihood of something like this happening twice?
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