‘The Price Is Right’ College Student Speaks Out After Winning $45,000

Gavin Gershon, from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, thought it was a dream come true just to be in the audience of The Price Is Right. He never thought he’d walk away with amazing prizes worth up to $45,000.

The college student appeared on the game show on Monday, March 17, during the Spring Break Special, which was filmed during winter break. He returned to campus in the new year with tens of thousands of dollars in prizes. Gershon was called up to Bidder’s Row for the second bid. He didn’t win, however, until the sixth one. Gershon bid on a 65-inch 4k UHD television. The Princeton University student guessed $500. The actual retail price was $542, so he won the bid.

When he got on stage, host Drew Carey told him he would be playing Punch-a-Bunch for the chance to win up to $25,000. Punch-a-Bunch features a punch board with 50 paper slips on it. Each slip conceals a monetary amount. At the beginning of the game, the contestant is shown four items and has to decide if the actual price is higher or lower than what is shown. For each one they get right, they earn a punch on the board. After the contestant is shown the first slip of paper with a dollar amount on it, they must decide if they want to continue playing or take the money and stop. The game continues until the game show contestant accepts the money, has no holes left to look in, or wins the top prize.

The first item Gershon had to pick from was a lap desk, which was shown for $25. He guessed higher, and he was correct, as the desk was retailed at $50. The next item was a hydro flask shaker bottle, which was priced at $60. Gershon guessed lower. He was right, as the bottle was $35. He was wrong on the third guess as he thought the Texas Instruments TI-30XIIS Calculator was higher than $45. It was only $13. The final item, a picnic cooler backpack, was retailed at $200, which Gershon thought was lower. It was $132, so he earned three punches on the board.

 

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He punched $1,000 and threw it back. Then, he picked $100 and threw that back, too. His final punch was $1,000, so he didn’t win the $25,000. Gershon did, however, win the Showcase Showdown with 55 as his other opponents went over 100.

For the Showcase, Gershon bid on a trip to Lake Mead, a Polaroid camera with film, a hot tub, and a 2025 Nissan Sentra S. He picked $33,251 for the price. The other contestant went over. He was $9,539 under, making the total price $42,790, and him the night’s winner.

The college student, who plans to major in linguistics and minor in quantitative economics and computer science, spoke to his college’s newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, about this time on The Price Is Right.

 

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“I came here and did exactly what my dream was to do,” he told the outlet. “It was crazy how less than 60 minutes before, I was just sitting in the audience hoping to get picked. Then out of nowhere, less than an hour later, I had just won 45,000 [dollars] worth of prizes.”

He revealed that he had spent winter break preparing for the show by assessing strategies and “watching to get a feel for the prices of the games.” “It’s been my favorite show growing up, and I’d watch it all the time. My mom told me, ‘When you’re eligible, when you turn 18, we’re gonna go to [Los Angeles] and try to be on the show.’”

Gershon was interviewed by the show’s producer during the beginning of the day but was not guaranteed to be called down. “I wanted more than anything to be called down and to have this opportunity, and seeing my name get called down was insane,” he told the outlet. “I only had 10 seconds to be super surprised and amazed before I really had to lock in and focus on what was actually happening.”

His mom was not able to be in the studio with him, but he said they went out to dinner that night to celebrate his win.  I’m very grateful to my mom for not only taking me to the show but introducing me to the show in the first place,” Gershon said.

“Even if I didn’t get picked — even if I was just in the audience and watched it all happen from the seats — it still would have been an absolutely once-in-a-lifetime experience. But the fact that I was able to do what I had always dreamed of doing … I just felt so lucky and so grateful,” he ended.

The Price Is Right, Weekdays, 11a/10c, CBS