Festivus Trolled

Every year around this time of year the immortals of the Realms of Despair host the Festivus Raffle. Prizes include decent pieces of equipment, rare things like rename scrolls, big gold prizes and the super special rare prizes. Usually it is on around a time I can't manage to make but for once I was able to be on around the time of the drawing. To buy tickets you had to visit the Festivus Troll at Darkhaven Square:

>look troll
The troll stands around handing out tickets and wishing you a Merry Festivus.
He also encourages you to read the sign before making any purchases.

A Festivus Raffle Troll is in perfect health.

You peek at his inventory:
     Nothing.

>exam sign
You take a closer look at an important raffle sign on the ground...
PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU GIVE ANY GOLD TO THE FESTIVUS TROLL

To purchase a ticket:
  give 1000000 coins troll  (1 ticket)
  give 10000000 coins troll (10 tickets)

Do NOT log out with your tickets, or they will be lost!

Do NOT give any amount of gold other than 1 mil or 10 mil at a time.  If you
do, that amount will be lost!

You may purchase as many tickets as you like, but you will be limited by inventory space.  You may store the tickets anywhere you wish.
The tickets are not tagged to individual characters.

Read the Archives for more information.

>give 1m coins troll
You give 1,000,000 coins to a Festivus Raffle Troll.
A Festivus Raffle Troll gives you Festivus ticket number 612481.

>exam ticket
You take a closer look at Festivus ticket
number 612481 in inventory...
You see nothing special.

I do wish that they would make the tickets save so that players not able to be on at the time of the drawing could be in with a chance to win something. In the end I decided to gamble 75,000,000 gold coins on the raffle. I thought that would be enough to give me a chance of winning something without going overboard on the draw. Just before the start of the draw Gonnil announced the following:

Gonnil quests 'a total of 13,161,000,000 gold was spent in this year's raffle'

If you add in however many tickets were given away as prizes to minor quests beforehand I realised my odds of winning on any particular draw are about 75 in 13,300 or slightly better than 1 in 200... But hey there's plenty of prizes? Surely I was in with a chance?

In the end the following identification of a ticket shows it all:

>c id ticket
Object 'Festivus ticket number 612481' is infused with your magic...
It is a level 51 trash, weight 1.
Special properties:  none
This trash has a gold value of 0.

The part where it says "trash" sums it up for me - not a single winner. The closest I got was when the ticket that won the Echoes of Damnation was just 5 more than one of my tickets. I guess there is always next year and next time I'll have to invest more than 75 million on the draw, but hey it's always good to be a part of the event. Thanks to Gonnil for running the event and congratulations to all the winners.