Is it legal to sell by car by lottery?

M

Mixxa

Guest
I'm not sure where I should be posting this question, so I'll try it here. I've had the idea of selling my car by means of a raffle, selling tickets for one or two euro each. The car is nothing special and I'm not trying to use this forum to find a buyer. My question is, is it legal to sell my car in this way? Can I sell five thousand tickets, at one Euro a time, for a car that's worth around 3,000? Somebody gets a very cheap car and I make a very nice profit. It sounds too good to be true. Is this a crazy idea?
 
In a word, NO. All lotteries have to be licensed by the Gardai under the terms of the Gaming & Lotteries Act 1956? and they won't licence a lottery for personal gain.
 
jhegarty said:
Who is going to buy a raffle ticket for a €3000 car ?
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Yeah, and more to the point how do you expect to sell 5000 tickets? What if you only sell 50? Will you go through with the raffle and lose ~ €2950, or defraud the purchasers and pretend someone won it, or fix the draw so your mate wins, or refund the ticket holders?

Reads like a scam to me...
 
Throw it up on eBay and start the bidding at €1. Far less hassle, and if you are lucky a bidding war will start and somone will pay over the odds for it.
 
And thinking about it more. Even if you got a really prime spot to sell your tickets , and people are there is a queue to buy tickets (which there won't be).

At 30 seconds a ticket , it will take you 10,000 minutes or 166 hours just to sell the tickets.
 
jhegarty said:
At 30 seconds a ticket , it will take you 10,000 minutes or 166 hours just to sell the tickets.
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I think your calculations are a bit off. 5000 tickets @ 30 seconds = 2500 mins = 41.66 hours. You make a good point though. Realistically, the hours put into selling these tickets would be worth more than the car, unless the OP has nothing better to do with his/her time.
 
kfk said:
I think your calculations are a bit off. 5000 tickets @ 30 seconds = 2500 mins = 41.66 hours. You make a good point though. Realistically, the hours put into selling these tickets would be worth more than the car, unless the OP has nothing better to do with his/her time.
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I'd happily work 41 hours for 5k :)
 
kfk said:
I think your calculations are a bit off. 5000 tickets @ 30 seconds = 2500 mins = 41.66 hours. You make a good point though. Realistically, the hours put into selling these tickets would be worth more than the car, unless the OP has nothing better to do with his/her time.
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Yes, multiplied when I should have divided.

aristotle25 said:
I'd happily work 41 hours for 5k :)
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That assume your 3k car is the hot item everyone is queueing to get tickets for.
 
I imagine that selling tickets for personal gain would not be easy. Lets say the ticket seller does well and sells 1 ticket every 15 minutes. It would take 1250 hours to sell all the tickets. Giving an 8 hour working day, this will be 156 days work. Total profit excluding expenses = €2000. Hourly wage, €1.60. Sell your car the old fashioned way OP.
 
I just don't see many people paying a Euro for a 1 in 5000 chance of winning an old car!

In the UK recently there was a couple who ran a lottery to sell a 750k house for £25 a ticket. Their website crashed with the demand.

Don't think it's illegal, per se, just not feasible.

SSE
 
There was a guy in Limerick who tried to sell his house this way last summer. he had to get a lottery licence first though. I think he tried selling 800 tickets at €500 a ticket and have the draw in the niteclub in limerick. He valued the house at 400k, prob worth at the time 350k. I don't know how he got on with it. but i thought it a novel idea at the time.

But its perfectly legit as long as you have a lottery licence to do so.

Although for the sake of a 3k car i don't think it would be worth the hassle or the costs involved in getting licenced etc.

as a an aside there are loads of unlicenced lotteries out there at the moment. ie most sport clubs run lotteries these days and most are unlicenced and unregulated.
 
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