A The Price Is Right contestant made the most common mistake on the game show — looking to the audience for help. This cost her a win and a car, but she stayed optimistic about it.
Contestant Grace came to the podium on the second item up for bid on Tuesday, May 13, but didn’t win until the fifth item up for bid. The item was a wooden home bar set. On the first bets, all of the contestants were over the retail price, so they had to bet again. The second time around Grace bid $495. Since the actual retail price was $532, and she was the closest without going over, she won and got to play a game for a bigger prize.
Host Drew Carey told her that she would be playing Gas Money for a 2025 Hyundai Elantra SE. Model James O’Halloran showed off the red car on stage. The way the game works is the contestant gets five prices on a board. One of them is the price of the car, and the other wrong amounts have cash prizes behind them. The cash adds up to $10,000.
She has to pick the car’s price last in order to win the money and the car. If she picks it before the fifth card, she doesn’t win anything. Grace could also opt to bow out and just leave with the cash she won instead of continuing on with the game.
Throughout the whole segment, Grace kept looking over at the audience, presumably at someone that she knew, to help her out. But, Carey told her to pay attention to the game.
The first number that she picked was $27,104. That wasn’t the price of the car and had $2,000 on the back of it. Grace then chose $22,300. That also wasn’t the price of the car, and she added $1,000 to her bank. For the third number, she turned to the audience to see what they were telling her. “Three or four?” she asked them.
Ultimately, the audience told her to go with $23, 565. This turned out to be the price of the car. Grace lost and the audience groaned.
“I get to spin the wheel!” she said enthusiastically.
“And you got a bar set,” Drew Carey said as she walked off the stage. Grace spun a 75 on the wheel so she didn’t make it to the Showcase because one of her opponents spun 100, the desired amount.
Grace’s game was posted to YouTube and fans pointed out the fatal flaw. “Remember, don’t look at the audience for help!” one said.
“Really? Grace, do not look at the audience for help,” she another.