We are starting a new raffle to raise funds for the International Top Spinners Association. ITSA is a non-profit association (registered in the state of Texas, USA) and its purpose is:
To promote the sport, game, art and hobby of playing with spinning tops, a universal toy.This second raffe of the year has a fabulous prize: a
7" HDPE swirly top made by John Markus!
Although I am officially donating this top, John gave me a deep discount and waved the requirement to pick it up at his lab because he knew my intention was to eventually use it to raise funds for ITSA. I confess it put me in a very difficult situation because it is really hard to give this top away!
This is a gorgeous large top, made by hand by John Markus from recycled HDPE. There are lots of hours of love put into this top. He collected and cut plastic of many colors: "black, grey, white, orange, red, light blue, dark blue, yellow (two types), green (two types) plus during the swirl sometime the blue and red can make a decent purple". After mixing and melting and giving it the overall shape in his homemade molding machine, he completely hollowed it out on a lathe to obtain his lightest 7" top so far, at 2.13 lb.
He wouldn't be able to charge the fair value for all the work he puts making a top like this, so his "list" price ($200) is already a steal. His real reward is meeting the players that get the top. That is why the only way you can buy one of his tops is to personally visit his lab at the university of Cincinnati. If you cannot do that, this raffle may be the only opportunity you will have of getting a John Markus top.
By the way, John is not only a very skilled craftsman but also a very good spintop player, so this top plays as good as it looks! I can personally testify to that
RAFFLE RULES:
100 tickets from 00 to 99 at $10 each. If not all tickets are sold, the raffle will be between those sold (somebody WILL win the top).
Tickets will be available for purchase starting NOW, May 8th, until the drawing date, Saturday May 21st (2 weeks).
The ticket numbers will be distributed in chronological order.
You will be notified of your ticket number(s) as soon as possible and the list of tickets sold will be periodically posted on this thread.
The closing time is 1 hour before the drawing.
Payment
Send Paypal payments to treasurer@spintops.org. For example, a payment of $20 will be assigned two consecutive numbers. You do not need to have a Paypal account, you can also pay with credit cards on their website (
www.paypal.com).
If you are in the US and prefer to pay by check, you can also do so (send me a pm or email top (at) ta0.com for the address). Checks received after the closing time or after all the tickets have been sold will be destroyed without cashing.
Drawing
The winning ticket will be determined as follows, based on the Daily 4 game from the Texas Lottery, to be held on Saturday May 21st at 12:17 PM CDT. The official website for the game is:
www.txlottery.org/export/sites/lottery/Games/Daily_4/ where you can watch the drawing live. Note that there are 4 drawing per day and this would be the second one.
The FIRST TWO numbers of the drawing will form the digits of the winning number. For example, if the Daily 4 numbers are: 2-0-9-2, the winning number will be 20.
If not all tickets are sold and there is no winner, we will use the SECOND TWO numbers of the same drawing. For example if the numbers are 7-7-4-3 and only 73 numbers were sold, the winner will be number 43. If the number made by the second two digits was not sold, we will use the following Daily 4 drawing (that same day) and so forth if necessary.
Thanks for your support and GOOD LUCK!
EDIT: corrected the day to Saturday 21st as there is no drawing on Sunday.
