OK how about these twists...
1) An Ebay auction for raffle tickets to win the Kirkham. Start the price at say $25.-- or 50.-- then people can bid to buy the tickets. Imagine what the price of ticket might go to if there is a limited number of tickets that will be sold - especially in the final hours before the drawing.
2) Another option, sell the tickets 'Dutch Auction' to all that bid for the highest bid price (common place on ebay). We can re-list the tickets several times between now and the fling - this will give us advertising on a national level, and direct access to folks that are looking for this particular type of car.
3) How about a 'reverse raffle'. Sell a limited amount of tickets, pull tickets all through the event. When a ticket is pulled, the owner of that ticket is eliminated. The last person standing after all the tickets are pulled wins the car. We could have other prizes (maybe a CSX, SPF, ERA
) at the 100th, 150th 200th ticket pulled.
I'll bet we wouldn't have a problem getting folks to stay around to see who wins :-) If we hold back 10 tickets for sale to the highest bidder (ebay perhaps) I'll be people will spend REAL money to buy another ticket if/when their ticket gets pulled! Heck, the more I think, the more ways I come up with to leverage the reverse raffle into more money than just the initial ticket sales... 50/50's, side-bets on the ticket numbers etc.
Personally, I think we should limit the amount of tickets sold - and let supply and demand drive up the price of some tickets that are held back from public sale. The reason I favor this approach is that it increases the odds of winning for any one ticket, and it allows a controlled environment in advance of the event. We would know exactly how many tickets remain to be sold, how hard to campaign etc. The whole situation is much more predictable.
Whatever the approach, I think it is important to set a reasonable goal, and get organized sooner rather than later...
Dave
PS Do we need the exact car that someone will win at the shows - or perhaps just a representative sample? I'd be willing to help the effort... if I can just get David and Thomas to send over a sample, I'd be willing to drive the heck out of it (for advertising purposes only of course