EclectEcon

Tim Hortons (iconic donut and coffee chain in Canada) is once again running its "Roll Up the Rim to Win" contest. You buy a coffee (or other drink), get a paper cup, roll up the rim at the indicated place, and have a one-in-nine chance of winning a prize. The bulk of the prizes are food or beverages, but there are a some big-screen television sets, some Ipods, and 30 cars to be won.

I did a brief Google search and was unable to find any reports that people have tried to counterfeit winning cups or rims to claim prizes. Nor have I been able to find any reports of steps taken by Tim Hortons to detect and prevent counterfeiting. I guess the expected benefits of counterfeiting a winning rim are less than the expected costs, and it surprises me just a bit. Probably the main problem with counterfeiting rims for the valuable prizes is that you have to know what they look like in order to reproduce them, and there are so few winning cups, and the images of the winning rims are not readily available, effectively reducing the risk to Tim Hortons that there will be any counterfeiting.

For a description of an ambitious art project based on the epistomology inherent in the losing cups from the Tim Hortons lottery, see this.