2021 Raffle Day Recap

Dale’s Wheels Through Time, home to America’s premier collection of rare and vintage American motorcycles, held its 19th annual Raffle Day on November 20. Each year, the museum finds, restores, and then gives away a classic American motorcycle through its annual raffle, the nonprofit’s biggest fundraiser. The raffle, started in 2002 by the museum’s founder Dale Walksler, exists to help sustain the cost of operations and to ensure the mission of preserving American motorized history continues for generations to come.

Walksler started Wheels Through Time museum while still a Harley-Davidson dealer in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. When he sold the dealership in 1999, he began to look for a location to open a stand-alone museum dedicated to preserving American transportation history and finally settled on the current site in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.

As the drawing time drew closer, the crowds that had spent the morning perusing the vast collection of bikes inside the museum made their way out to the front lawn to see who the lucky winner would be.

At 2:00, emcee John Gustafson greeted the crowd as a young boy named Henry was lowered into the back of a converted Ford Model AA Pickup that served as the container for the tickets. After a quick stirring of the tickets, on the count of three from the crowd, he reached in and pulled up one slip of paper that would instantly change someone’s life. The ticket was handed to Matt, and he read off the name, Todd Campbell of East Palestine, OH. Campbell had visited the museum back in 2015 and said he buys the “Best Deal” raffle ticket package every year. An avid rider, the 1948 Panhead will be his sixth motorcycle.

After the Grand Prize drawing, Henry pulled two more tickets for second and third place prizes. A second-place prize of ten thousand dollars went to Sharon Crickmar of Raleigh, NC. She and her husband Glenn visited the museum a few years ago, fell in love with it, and said they always spread the news about Dale’s Wheels Through Time. They each buy the “Better Deal” package every year. The third-place prize of five thousand dollars went to Rex Gore of Miamisburg, Ohio. Rex and his wife have visited the museum several times and buy raffle tickets each year. This year, they purchased the “Better Deal” as well.