Robinhood is donating $130,000 worth of gold bars, plus 999 smaller bars. But should you enter?

Inside Robinhood’s Gold Giveaway: What’s Really Available

Popular online brokerage Robinhood is offering its discerning clients a chance at something rare for a brokerage: physical gold. The brokerage’s new sweepstakes, open to Robinhood Gold members through Black Friday, will award 1,000 gold bullion prizes to selected winners.

One grand prize winner will receive a one-kilogram gold bar – just over 32 troy ounces, which is worth around $130,000 based on the price of gold at the time of writing on Friday, November 14. The other 999 winners will each receive a 2.5-gram gold bar, which is currently worth about $330.

The total value of all prizes will fluctuate with the price of gold, but with the precious metal trading near record levels, these are valuable prizes by any standards.

What you need to do to get in, and what it might cost you

To qualify for the giveaway, you’ll need to be a Robinhood Gold member and a Robinhood brokerage account holder. Although brokerage accounts are free, Robinhood Gold, the company’s premium membership, costs $5 per month or $50 per year.

Entries are based on the amount you deposit into your brokerage account during the Sweepstakes Period, which runs from November 3 through November 28 (“Black Friday”). You’ll receive one entry for every $1 deposited — so a $5,000 deposit equals 5,000 entries — and you can make multiple deposits.

There is a limit of 1,002,000 entries per person, regardless of how much you deposit. To be eligible, your Gold membership must be active as of midnight ET on November 28.

Pull-ups work in reverse. If you withdraw funds from your account during the Sweepstakes Period, these amounts reduce your total entries. So, to maximize your chances, you’ll need to hold your deposits until at least November 29th.

Is it worth moving your money in order to get gold?

If you’re already a Robinhood Gold member, participating in the giveaway costs you nothing other than transferring cash to your brokerage account. The trade-off is what that cash earns while it’s standing there. For Gold members, Robinhood currently pays 3.50% interest on uninvested cash brokerage funds, which is competitive but not among the best rates available.

If you’re earning more than 4% in one of the best high-yield savings accounts, moving money to Robinhood for the lottery could mean giving up some interest income for several weeks. For example, on a $15,000 balance, the difference between a 3.5% and 4.5% profit comes out to about $12 over a month — not a deal-breaker, but worth noting.

For those who are not already Gold members, the account changes. You’ll need to join Robinhood Gold at $5 per month or $50 per year to qualify for the sweepstakes. Membership comes with many perks: a 3.50% rate on uninvested cash, a 3% match on IRA contributions (although you must keep your Gold membership active for a year to retain this benefit), lower mortgage rates, and access to Morningstar research and margin investing.

Since you can cancel after one month, it is possible to enter the sweepstakes at a cost of only $5 plus the effort of transferring funds to your account. Whether it’s worth it depends on how badly you want the gold bullion rewards.

As with all lotteries, it’s important to keep the right perspective: the odds of winning one of the gold bars are very slim. If you don’t find the benefits of a Gold membership or a Robinhood brokerage account attractive on their own, the lottery alone probably isn’t worth it.