Did You Know: All About the First PCH Prize Patrol Delivery!

Greetings, fans and friends! Boy, do I have a super-duper behind-the-scenes PCH story for you!!!

Everyone knows about the world-famous PCH Prize Patrol. And you’ve all seen those fabulous PCH Winning Moments – when the Prize Patrol awards unsuspecting winners their life-changing SuperPrizes – either online or in our TV commercials.

But there’s a whole amazing story behind the very first PCH Prize Patrol delivery 28 years ago that involves Prize Patrol Elite member Todd Sloane … a video camcorder … and some quick and creative thinking!

[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm0CovD-N_8[/tube]

That video above is the first PCH Winning Moment, shot on Todd Sloane’s camcorder! Here’s what Todd had to say about it:

“In January of 1988, we awarded our first-ever $10 Million prize,”  Todd explains. “The way we awarded prizes back then was a little different. Typically, we would select the winner here at PCH and someone would call them on the phone. Starting that January, we decided to promote that we would announce the winning SuperPrize number on TV.”

Todd continues, “When we picked the winner for the $10,000,000, as luck would have it, they lived right across the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey. We showed up the next day while they were watching the winning number announcement. Dave Sayer and a couple of other people waited outside their house, and after the announcement ran on TV, they knocked on the door.”

Todd explains that Dave came back the next day and told him the story of how the winners were jumping up and down and screaming. “My first question” says Todd, was “Did you videotape it?” Camcorders were just beginning to get popular back in 1988, but, alas, there was no videotape!

“With all of that in mind,” Todd relates, “the following August we were set to announce another winner — this time for $1 Million. I suggested we do the same thing, but this time, we’ll wait outside and I will videotape it.”

Knowing that the world was ready to see a PCH Winning Moment, Todd went to a local electronics store and bought a new camcorder (which he thinks is still sitting somewhere in PCH headquarters) for the company, for what was the going price at that time … $1,400!

“Once the winner was chosen at random (John and Julie Yancy of Austin, Texas), we flew to Texas, and waited outside their home with a portable TV set, so we could hear when the winning number announcement ran on TV and then run down the driveway to knock on the door,”  Todd says. “And I was the cameraman!”

Good thing Todd was able to capture that PCH Winning Moment … because just as the Prize Patrol was running down the driveway, the camcorder battery started to die!

Todd’s idea was a success: the Yancys went crazy, Todd returned to PCH with a ton of footage, which he thought would make terrific TV commercials … and the rest, as they say, is history!

I really have to thank Todd for going into such great detail on this fascinating story about the first Prize Patrol delivery! It really shows how Publishers Clearing House loves giving away prizes!

So, how would YOU react if the PCH Prize Patrol came to your home and recorded you winning the giant SuperPrize? Would you scream, cry, jump up and down, or stand there in complete shock? One thing’s for sure, you’ll never know if you don’t enter now!

Debbie K.
PCH Creative

P.S. Get the “inside scoop” and more PCH fun facts with these other “Did You Know” blogs:

Did You Know: All About the PCH Prize Patrol Van:
Did You Know: The Prize Patrol Once Found a Winner on a Plane! 

P.P.S. Do you love playing online lotto? Read today’s Play&Win blog to find out how you can play PCH Lotto and enter to win PCH prizes for FREE!