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Elaine is going to have a chance to win “one of the nicest prizes EVER offered on The Price is Right…”

CASH! In 1978, $10,000 could have bought TWO cars!

How much cash Elaine wins depends on her luck on the punchboard…

…and what she knows about these four small prizes. Every prize she wins will grant the right to play the punchboard. When the game debuted, contestants chose one prize at a time.

This smoke detector is not $18, is the right price higher or lower? Elaine says higher…

And she’s right!

In the game’s earliest days, contestants punched a hole AND chose a letter in the word “PUNCHBOARD” immediately after winning a small prize. The two amounts would be multiplied to determine the cash prize.

The letters in PUNCHBOARD concealed two each of the numbers “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4”, and a single “5” and “10”. Behind the letter “P”, Elaine has found a 4.

Elaine punches through this hole. The board initially contained 20 “DOLLAR” slips, 20 “HUNDRED” slips, and 10 “THOUSAND” slips.

Elaine can take $400 and quit, or try her luck again. She chooses to go on!

Uh oh, her second turn was only worth $2. She throws that back with no hesitation.

To make matters worse, she misses her third small prize. If she misses the fourth one as well, she’ll head home empty-handed.

Fortunately, she wins the prize and the punch. She’ll end up with whatever she gets on this final turn. What’s behind the “A”?

A “1”. Will she win one dollar? One hundred dollars?

Nope, one THOUSAND dollars!

Elaine’s plenty happy with $1000!

After three months, the multiplication aspect was dropped and the letters were abandoned. Each slip in the punchboard offered a single cash amount, including two $10,000 slips up for grabs.

Players also played all four small prizes before punching the punchboard, ensuring that almost every contestant would win some cash.

Bob tries to tempt Virginia with $500…

…but she presses onward, and ends up with only $250.

Within a year, the sign had lost its color and gone totally yellow.

Harold has punched a “SECOND CHANCE”. He gets to punch another hole immediately, and they’ll add $50 to that.

Rather than throw both slips back, Harold bails with $550. What did he miss out on?

PAINFUL! Had he not kept the $550, he would have won $10,000 in the very next hole!

Here’s a happy winner! Robert won $10,000 on his first punch!

Janis bailed with a cool $5K!

And John began dancing a jig after finding the big money!

Punch a Bunch became one of Bob’s favorite opportunities to tease an anxious contestant, and he tried to draw out revealing each slip for as loooooong as he could.

Cheryl, an auditor, found a $250 second chance slip, punched her bonus punch, and in doing so…

…became one of a few people to win MORE than $10,000 on Punch a Bunch! Remember, Cheryl, $10,250 won on a TV show is reported as $10,250 of earned income!

Punch a Bunch was one of Janice’s favorite games. Once, when a game ended early, Janice showed us her right hook…

…and to her shock, found a $10,000 slip!

And the day Bob stopped dyeing his hair, Janice pulled out a piece of chalk and made sure Bob’s photo on the $10,000 bill matched.

Sandra punched a hole… and there was no slip to be found inside.

Somebody in the audience shouted “Give her the $10,000!” and Bob agreed that was the only fair thing to do.

Bryan played one of the most shocking and memorable Punch a Bunch games of all time!

“I think that you will agree… that it is nice to win FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS!”

But Brian motions to throw it back. “Take it, Bob!”

Bryan’s wife pleads with him to keep it! But Bryan remains defiant!

“Audience, all together, TELL HIM WHAT TO DO!”

“KEEP IT!”

“Audience, if you’re scared, buy a dog. I’M GOING FOR IT!”

Against all odds… his next slip was the $10,000!

Bryan beat 25:1 odds! The riskiest gamble in Price is Right history paid off!

For TPIR’s 25th Anniversary week, Punch a Bunch got a makeover. The yellow old-timey carnival theme is out; a pastel craft cutout theme is in.

To avoid influencing a contestant even accidentally, no personnel on stage–host, models, or camera operators–know where the big money is hiding. A producer backstage decides which hole contains the big bucks.

On the primetime Million Dollar Spectacular episodes, Punch a Bunch’s top prize was raised to $25,000.

Cheryl managed to find one of the two $25K slips and score the big prize!

Eventually that $25,000 top prize made it over to the daytime show, albeit as only a single slip.

The small prize podiums also got a glowup.

Amanda’s scored $5,000. There are only two slips bigger, should she keep it, or go on?

She kept the $5K, but Bryan’s spirit is haunting from beyond.

In Season 40, the prize distribution was overhauled. $50 slips and second chances were done away with, in favor of adding more $5,000, $2,500, and $1,000 slips.

For Halloween 2013, the board gave Drew a “hand” with the cards.

After six years and 121 attempts to give it away, Linda finally became the first daytime contestant to take home $25,000!

When Punch a Bunch crossed over to Let’s Make a Deal via “Mash Up Week”, contestants had to decide between taking what was in the hole they punched or trading it for the box Jonathan Mangum was holding.

Cody Davis, a safety for the Los Angeles Rams, had no trouble at all tackling the punchboard when he was a contestant!

A chance to win a CAR playing Punch a Bunch? This 2017 BMW 320i replaced two of the $100 slips during Dream Car Week.

Perhaps Christine will be happy taking $5,000 instead?

No, she throws it back in search of something better!

Drive safe! She found a slip to the BMW hiding in one of the corners!

As of this writing, only three contestants have won $25,000 in daytime: the aforementioned Linda, as well as Sandy in 2017, and Brian in 2021.

For Punch a Bunch’s 40th birthday, the game was played for $40,000, and a special showcase was themed around it featuring $4000 and boxing equipment.

And when Halloween 2023 went with a pro wrestling theme, there was NO CHANCE that Punch a Bunch would be left out of the fray!

A special primetime twist added five “DOUBLE” slips to the board; punching one functioned as a second chance, doubling whatever they punched next.

And “DOUBLE” slips could stack on each other, meaning the top prize for this playing was a whopping $800,000!

Thad has found a “DOUBLE” in a corner…

…and seals the deal by finding a $25,000 slip immediately afterwards!

OUCH! Albert smashed his hand against the punchboard’s frame.

Drew accidentally punched a hole himself trying to do a reveal. At the end of the game, he learned he had punched $5,000.