No One Wins the Bet in Midnight Madness

It isn’t easy to predict snowfall accumulations on the North Fork even after a blizzard in December followed by a major snow storm this month. And that has made Bob Scott of Robert’s Jeweler’s in Southold a difficult man to beat.

Scott has been holding a contest to guess the snowfall at his jewelry store in the Feather Hill Shopping Center on Route 25 for twenty years.

 “I haven’t made a payout yet,” Scott said, “although a few times people have come close.”

The rules of the Midnight Madness contest are simple: Pick one of four nights between Dec. 31 and Jan. 3 as a snow fall night. If it snows 3 inches or more between 6 p.m. and 11:59 p.m. on any chosen day, Scott will refund the full price of any purchase made between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve at his jewelry store located in the Feather Hill Shopping Center on Route 25 in Southold. Snowfall accumulations are based on measurements taken by the National Weather Service located at the Brookhaven Laboratories in Calverton.

The lucky winner, if there is one, will be issued a full refund during the first two weeks in February.

“It’s over for this year,” Scott said of his widely imitated contest that has been adopted by jewelry stores around the country.

The contest started when Scott noticed a store promotion years ago offering customers a 10 to 20 percent discount based on a guess.

“I decided to make it real and give a full refund if they were right,” Scott said.

If you can’t guess the snowfall, Scott runs an easier contest too where customers actually win. This contest involves guessing but it is more tangible. Each year Scott files a large glass jar with a tiny object. Customers who patronize the store between Thanksgiving and Christmas take a guess at how many items are in the jar. The five customers who come close to guessing the actual amount get a full refund on their purchase.This year, the jar was filled with golf tees, an idea generated by Gary Sapiane, of WLNG radio in Sag Harbor. Sapiane and Scott are golfing buddies. 

 “It just seemed like a logical thing to do,” Sapiane said of his idea to count golf tees this year on Christmas Eve. Scott’s wife and son do the counting.  When the five closest tallies are gathered, Scott calls WLNG with the winning totals and writes out five checks to the winners.

“We announce the results on the air,” Sapiane said.

While Scott releases the jar’s content total, he shields his customer’s privacy and does not announce their names.

“This year the total was two thousand and something,” Sapiane said of the golf tees. "The whole thing is a great idea, people like it. They like to guess and they like to gamble."

Sapiane said he does not enter either contest because he is a friend of Scott's, even though the rules don’t bar him from competing. Employees and family members, however,  are not eligible.

Over the years the jar has been filled with Christmas tree balls, watch batteries and money (that required contestants to guess the dollar amount). One item Scott will not put in the jar is marbles.

"Too easy to guess,” Scott said. “People can buy a bunch of marbles, put them in the same size jar and come close to the amount.”