Get off, George Fletcher of Bay Shore. You’re the winner of the April 18 episode of “The Price is Right,” with total earnings of $67,752, including a pair of cars.
A 56-year-old Bay Shore resident who grew up in Medford, Fletcher is a Metropolitan Transportation Authority planning executive who, yes, literally, makes sure the trains run on time. He’s also a true “Price” fan who has studied the show, and apparently everything that makes up the Consumer Price Index, for decades. He first appeared on the show in 2002 when he lost in the all-important “Showcase” round that closes each edition of the long-running daytime game show.
He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice, he got the April 18th “Showcase” (and a second car), but he also earned some bragging rights, or in his own words, “no he was going to be the guy who got the first two overbids in his ‘Showcase'” since “Price’s” release in 1972.
In the April 18 edition, Fletcher was the first to be called to the podium – that iconic “low!” moment, and quickly went to work, winning a round of “Card Game,” in which a contestant chooses cards from a deck of cards, each assigned an incremental value applied to the cost of a car.
Fletcher stopped when the cost difference was $23,900 to $25,900 and, bingo, the list price of the stripped-down, no-frills 2022 Mitsubishi Outlander SUV was $25,820.00. As Fletcher joked in a recent phone interview, “if the car had had fenders, I would have lost.”
George Fletcher competes on “The Price Is Right” with host Drew Carey on the April 18 episode. Credit: Fremantle via CBS
As the first prize of the show, he had won an invitation to the “Showcase” podium. That’s when things got interesting.
A deceptively simple part of this game show, “Showcase” requires the eventual winner underbid in a set of prizes. The contestant who oversupply automatically lose.
The first set of prizes included a pair of Kawasaki motorcycles and an exotic trip. Fletcher continued to guess, forcing the contestant sitting next to him, who had also appeared on the show before, in her case 42 years earlier, to make a guess.
A bad one as it turned out: he overbid by $600.
Then it was Fletcher’s turn. Their potential winnings included a fully loaded 2023 Mazda CX-30 and a new kitchen.
And…drum roll…he offered $32,300, or well below the asking price of $39,802.
In a recent interview, Fletcher admitted that he didn’t need to know much about the intricacies of car pricing, but just enough to know how many accessories are attached to award-winning cars. He also knew not to exaggerate. When he lost that “Showcase” in 2002, and a chance to win a Pontiac, “I outbid by $222.00, [so] this time I was conservative and shy.”
But seriously, Mr. Fletcher, how do you know so much about the cost of things?
“I DVR the show every day. I’m a big fan and always have been, and I watch when I’m playing in the kitchen,” he said. “But when I got to the point where I was going to come back to the show, which was taped last February, I spent a couple of months paying attention and getting a feel for the cars and what kind of price range they’re in.”
Most of the cars featured in the show are “middle-of-the-road, which is what ‘Price’ is all about: we’re just normal people.” However, during the Bob Barker era (which ended with his retirement as host in 2007), the “Price” cars were exclusively American. Since then, cars have been popping up all over the place, making the game (and the price points) more complicated.
And by the way, what will Fletcher do with two cars? (It will take ownership later this summer.) “I’m still trying to figure out what to do. There’s a big tax liability, so I’ll probably sell the other one. I’m very thankful and grateful that, in the end, I’ll have a new car and kitchen with very little cash outlay.”
