Fans of the show are probably all too familiar with the game “3 Strikes.” During the game, a contestant is shown a series of eight balls, five white, and three red. The game has won several contestants cars throughout the years, and others have come painstakingly close.
In 1986, a woman named Heather Wilson won a Chevrolet Corvette, worth more than $30,000 at the time. The most expensive car ever won on three strikes was a Cadillac CT6 in 2018, worth more than $64,000. Although the game has been through a few changes over the years, it remains today.
Patricia Bernard, Come on Down! Patricia?
In 1976, during one taping of the show that was being hosted by Bob Barker, one contestant had some pretty bad timing. While names were being called for people to come on stage, when they got to one of them, Patricia Bernard – nothing happened. Everyone looked and looked as the name was called repeatedly, but no one appeared.
So where was Patricia? Apparently, Patricia had run off to take a bathroom break. The same thing happened several decades later to a woman named Tara Armstrong in 2019. “Come on down!” called George Gray, and just moments later followed with, “is she…she’s in the bathroom.”
The Price Is Right Storage Lot
The show owns a 30,000-square-foot warehouse on the CBS lot in which they store all of their prizes for a certain amount of time, including about three dozen cars. That means they have their car lot. "Price is Right" contestants have won millions and millions of dollars’ worth of items.
During one show, Mike Stouber walked away with more than $260,000 in cash and prizes. Well, he had to wait a little while to collect, but eventually, he did. And, on one evening edition, a contestant was said to have won over $1.5 million.
Six Decades on the Air
"The Price is Right" has been on TV longer than any other game show in history. It first aired in 1956, making it 64-years old as of 2020. The show premiered on NBC’s daytime TV in the mid-1950s, hosted by Bill Cullen. In 1963, it moved over to ABC, and shortly after was when Barker took over as host.
The show’s been through a few shifts and different hosts, but it maintained its status as one of America’s favorites for more than six decades. All of the hosts of the show seem to love their jobs, and all stay for years upon years.
Winning the Showcase Showdown
The three contestants who are invited up on stage are then invited to duke it out for a chance to play in "The Price is Right" Showcase. So, to make it to that round, one first needs to beat the inevitable Showcase Showdown, which is impossible to win. Everyone was starting to assume that was exactly the case until 2010, when someone finally guessed the exact value.
60-year old Terry Kiess surprised everyone when he was the first person in 38-years of the show to do so. Producers were so wary of the guess that they paused taping to do some investigating. But the investigation revealed no such thing, and it turns out that Mr. Kiess was just really, really lucky when it came to guessing numbers.