Friend sells a car they won for $6000 less than market value, gets criticized later because they're “profiting” off of their friends: ‘[I] sold it to friends for basically half the cost’

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
May 20, 2026 9:45 AM EDT

When you win a car, is it legally yours? 

Lottery winners, gold star earners, and people on a winning streak in Vegas would argue that no matter what you win, once your winnings are in your pocket or in your possession, it's yours. Yet, this winner in our next story, a humble man who'd entered a random car lottery, things weren't so simple. 

He won a car, decided he didn't want to keep it, and sold it for less than market value to a couple of friends. And although he literally paid taxes on his winnings, other friends in the group chimed in with negative comments, claiming he was a "bad friend" because he "profited" off of the folks he sold to. 

Sure, he ended up with an extra $10k in his pocket, but if he had sold to strangers, he would have doubled his earnings. Was this winner ultimately a loser? According to the criticism of his friends, he was, but in my eyes, this man was turning lemons into lemonade and getting scolded for selling at 50-cents a pop. 

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  • When I was younger, a family friend won a car on The Price is Right. For those of you young folks and non-daytime television watchers out there, this was a game show where contestants got overly excited about the price of a common household appliance in the hopes that they'd go home with a new car, a speedboat, or a pair of jet skis. Alas, after my family friend brought home her humble Kia, she drove that thing into the ground. She put hundreds of thousands of miles on that car, and it quickly became a staple of an entire era of her life. Was that car hers? Absolutely, and it was the second time she was given the keys backstage by the Price is Right employees. 

    Similarly, this man in the next story won a car that could be his forever, but instead, he decided to sell it at a discounted price to a pair of friends. In my eyes, he was being a good guy, helping them buy a good, new car for a deal, but to the others, he was the villain. What do you think? 

  • Cheezburger Image 10631714048
    via Getty Images Signature (pascal malmas)

  • AITA for selling something I got for free?

    A few weeks back, I (44M) won a car in one of them supermarket giveaways. There are various reasons I don't want to keep it: I spend a significant portion of the year traveling between two
    via bulaybil
  • continents, I don't have a garage to keep it in when I'm in my home country, and perhaps most importantly - the car has a manual transmission and I am bad enough driver on an automatic. I could,
    via bulaybil
  • however, use a couple of thousand Euros extra, so I decided to sell it. Friends of mine, a married couple I will call Laura (36F) and
    via bulaybil
  • Patrick (38M), are in the market for a new car, so I turned to them first. The ticket price of the car is 20k EUR, I need to pay taxes on the winnings of some 4k, so I offered it to them for 14k. They
    via bulaybil
  • save 6k (which means they don't need to take out a partial loan as they were planning), I end up with 10k, everyone wins. Laura and Patrick very happily accepted and
    via bulaybil
  • Cheezburger Image 10631713792
    via Getty Images Signature (pascal malmas)
  • we should have all the paperwork done out next week. I was hanging out with Laura and Patrick last weekend, signing the paperwork. At one point, another friend of
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  • theirs let's call him - showed Jake (34M) up. I don't talk to him, why is long story, one of the reasons is that he is a knowitall ah le who is just incapable of keeping
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  • out of other people's business. And sure enough, when Jake found out what was going on, he felt the need to offer his opinion which amounted to accusing me of "taking
    via bulaybil
  • advantage" of Laura and Patrick and arguing that if I were a real friend, I would just give them the car. Laura (who doesn't like Jake either, but is the sweetest person ever,
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  • so does not let it show) politely shut him down and he thankfully left shortly after that. Laura then apologized and told me that she thought what Jake had said was stupid, but
    via bulaybil
  • that surprisingly to - both of us - some other friends of hers think the same. And then yesterday I met up with Alex (39M), a mutual friend of mine and Laura's.
    via bulaybil
  • Cheezburger Image 10631713536
    via Getty Images Signature (pascal malmas)
  • Laura, him and me worked in the same office for a couple of years and while I left for greener pastures long time ago, they - and some other mutual friends - still work there. Alex told me,
    via bulaybil
  • with some amusement, that the entire thing with the car has been the subject of much gossip at the office. According to what he told me, some people are basically taking
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  • Jake's side and calling why I did "exploitative" and "taking advantage of Laura's situation", since I am charging them money for something that cost me nothing.
    via bulaybil
  • Moose-Live NTA. This is an absolutely bizarre take. It's nobody's business whether you won the car, bought it, or inherited it. It was yours to keep or sell.
    via Moose-Live
  • Cesarlikethesalad ⚫ NTA. You could have sold it to strangers for a higher amount. Instead you sold it to friends at basically half the cost. So you're losing money in this transaction. I
    via Cesarlikethesalad
  • think what you are doing is great. All the people who say you should give it away for free are acting like that's what they would do, but in reality, they would never have done it. They're acting
    via Cesarlikethesalad
  • like the holy person because they're not in the situation. I guarantee if they were, they would have sold it to their friend for full price or even higher. Don't think about what they say. You're good.
    via Cesarlikethesalad

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