MyPrize Packs Live in California and New York, Casino Is Not

MyPrize says it sells $1 to $250 trading-card packs in California, Michigan and New York, the three states its sweepstakes casino does not reach. Nine of its own pages carry the identical line: MyPrize Packs "is live in every US state except Washington" and "CA, MI, and NY are collectibles-only." Its terms-of-use changelog says the January 2026 rewrite was made "to reflect updated state statutory framework & MyPrize non-Sweeps Cash product." That rewritten rulebook then says nothing about the product at all: no pack terms, no sell-back terms, no shipping terms.

So a player in California, Michigan or New York can spend up to $250 on a product whose governing document does not describe it. That is the practical consequence, and the rest of this piece is how we established it.

We read the changelog line today in the live Terms of Use at myprize.us, version 1.4, and again in the Internet Archive's September 2 capture of the same page, so it is not wording we caught mid-edit.

MyPrize is not one of the 30 brands in our database and we have never rated it. We went looking because what its own documents describe is a shape we have now seen twice: not leaving a state that banned the sweepstakes model, but selling a different product into it. Crown Coins did the structural version in Indiana, renaming Sweeps Coins to SC Tickets and routing wins to a separate Cash Balance rather than leaving Indiana. This is the other version, where the second product is not a currency at all.

What is MyPrize selling in California, Michigan and New York?

A dollar-priced trading-card pack. Not a sweepstakes casino.

The identical line appears at the foot of all nine MyPrize Packs pages we pulled today: "MyPrize Packs is live in every US state except Washington. CA, MI, and NY are collectibles-only. 18+. Terms apply." The company's boilerplate is more explicit about the split: "MyPrize Packs reaches more states than MyPrize sweepstakes play, including California, where Packs run on a US-dollar model."

The mechanics, in MyPrize's words on its card-ripping page:

1. Buy a pack. "Browse the packs, pick one, and buy it." Pokemon tiers start at $1; sports tiers run $25 to $250.
2. Open one card. "Every pack holds one individual card, and that card is a real, physical collectible."
3. Decide inside three hours. "Ship your single card to your door, or sell it back for instant value. You have three hours to decide."
4. Do nothing and it sells itself. After the three hours the card "sells back automatically," and the value "lands on your balance instantly."

We could not test the geolocation gate ourselves. Everything in that table is MyPrize describing its own availability, and we hold no account there.

This is not the first card product we have read into California and New York. In August we priced Albumza and CollectDuel, a pair of sites that admit players from those two states and nowhere else, where cards bought for $1 to $1,000 carry free Tickets that redeem at 100 Tickets to the dollar. The difference matters. Albumza's cards are a route to a cash redemption, which puts the "awards cash or cash equivalents" question squarely in play. MyPrize's stated payout is a graded card you ship or sell back, and MyPrize is a large operator adding a second product rather than a new site built around one.

Do MyPrize's dollar card packs get around California's AB 831?

That is the question, and the statute answers part of it and leaves part of it open.

We pulled the chaptered text of AB 831, Chapter 623, from the California Legislature today. It added Section 337o to the Penal Code, and subsection (c)(3) defines an "online sweepstakes game" as a game meeting all of four conditions: it is available online; it "utilizes a dual-currency system of payment"; it "simulates gambling"; and it "awards cash or cash equivalents." Because the conditions are cumulative, a product that misses one is outside the definition.

Two details in that text cut in opposite directions, and both belong here. The gambling condition is deliberately open: the statute lists slot machines, video poker, table games, lotteries, bingo and sports wagering, but prefaces them with "includes, but is not limited to," so a new format is not safe merely by not appearing on the list. Against that, the amended Business and Professions Code section says in plain words: "This paragraph does not make a game that does not award cash prizes or cash equivalents unlawful."

On its face, a pack bought for US dollars that pays out a physical card misses at least the dual-currency prong that the whole sweepstakes casino model is built on. Nothing is exchanged for a coin. The open question is the fourth condition, because MyPrize's own copy says an unshipped card "sells back automatically" after three hours and "the value lands on your balance instantly." Whether a collectible that converts to balance value on a three-hour timer is a "cash equivalent" is not a question this desk can answer. No California regulator or court has ruled on MyPrize Packs, no enforcement action against the company has surfaced, and we did not contact MyPrize before publishing.

It matters because the penalties in California are real. Section 337o makes a violation a misdemeanor carrying a fine of $1,000 to $25,000, up to a year in county jail, or both, and subsection (b) reaches payment processors, geolocation providers, gaming content suppliers, platform providers and media affiliates who "knowingly and willfully support" one. That affiliate clause is why our California page carries no sign-up links, and this article does not carry one either.

Is MyPrize blocked in New York, Michigan and Washington?

Washington is blocked outright in MyPrize's own terms. New York and Michigan get the same one-word answer as California: collectibles-only. Three different legal routes, and MyPrize treats two of them the same way.

New York's S5935A banned sweepstakes-casino operation outright on December 5, 2025, effective on signing, with civil penalties of $10,000 to $100,000 per violation and the same reach into marketing affiliates. Michigan never passed a dedicated statute; its Gaming Control Board has run a cease-and-desist campaign since 2024 instead, and every brand we track with a published exclusion list names the state. Those are very different instruments, and MyPrize's public answer to both is the same phrase: collectibles-only. How all 51 jurisdictions sort into banned, restricted and commercial sits in our state-by-state legality matrix.

Washington is the exception it does not try. RCW 9.46.240 makes transmitting gambling information online a Class C felony, and Washington is the only state MyPrize's terms name at all: users warrant they "do not access the Games or Service from the State of Washington or any jurisdiction outside the United States," which the document calls the "Restricted Territories." One state in the operative terms. Three more in the marketing copy. That gap between what a rulebook says and what a product page says is the single most common shape we find when we read operator paperwork, and it is why we read both.

Do MyPrize's terms of use mention Packs at all?

Only in passing, and never in a binding clause. The Terms of Use we read today run to roughly 73,000 characters and contain no section on Packs, no sell-back terms, no shipping terms, no redemption section of the kind that governs a normal sweeps cash-out, and no sweepstakes rules. The word "redemption" does not appear once. The only operative use of "redeem" says the opposite: "Virtual Coins are non-redeemable, non-transferrable, and carry no cash value."

Every mention of "Packs," "card" or "Sweeps Cash" in that document sits inside the marketing block pinned to the page footer, with one exception: the version-history line announcing the non-Sweeps-Cash product. A rulebook revised on January 1, 2026 specifically to reflect a new product says nothing binding about it. A separate sweepstakes-rules page does not exist either. We requested myprize.us/info/sweepstakes-rules and an invented control path on the same site: both returned HTTP 400, and the two response bodies are identical once the echoed path and the rotating security token are set aside. That makes the missing rules page a checked absence rather than a failed guess.

What the terms do cover is worth knowing before you spend $250 on a pack. Purchases are "final" and the company is "not required to provide a refund for any reason." Virtual Coins expire after 60 consecutive days without gameplay. Users waive "any rights to bring a claim or cause of action under any gambling loss recovery act."

And disputes go to JAMS arbitration with a class-action waiver, opt-out by email within 30 days of agreeing, which is the same 30-day window we have found across six unrelated operator groups. Read the price of that clause against the price of the product. The terms say "You will only be required to pay arbitration fees of $250," the arbitration is seated in Wilmington, Delaware unless conducted remotely, Delaware law governs the clause, and court venue if it ever gets there is Miami, Florida. The filing fee alone equals the most expensive pack on sale. For a $1 Pokemon tier it is 250 times the purchase. That is the arithmetic that makes the 30-day opt-out worth using rather than reading.

What should you check before buying a MyPrize pack?

Treat the two products as separate purchases with separate protections, because MyPrize's own paperwork does.

If you are in California, Michigan or New York, what is on offer is a dollar purchase of a randomized physical item, not a sweepstakes entry. The published odds and the shipped card are the product; the instant sell-back is a convenience the terms do not describe, price or guarantee. Three hours is a short clock, and the default if you do nothing is a sale, not a shipment.

If you were looking for a sweepstakes casino, MyPrize is not one we have tested, scored or ranked. Our ranked list of sweepstakes casinos and our newest-brands tracker cover the 30 brands whose documents we read on a schedule, and MyPrize is not among them. That is a statement about our coverage, not a judgement on the brand.

This also updates something on our own site. Our Michigan page says that of the 30 brands we track, "we could not find a single one whose own current terms still list Michigan as available." That remains true of the 30. It is now worth a line noting that an untracked operator publishes a live non-sweeps product there, and that has gone to the data sweep.

Sources & documents

• MyPrize Packs card-ripping page and digital packs page - the state line, the $1 to $250 pricing, the three-hour automatic sell-back and the published-odds claim, all read September 14, 2026. We fetched every collectibles URL in the Packs index and its sitemap: the identical state sentence appears on nine of them. The tenth, the index page itself, does not carry it.
• MyPrize.US Terms of Use, version 1.4, stamped "updated as of January 1, 2026" - the Washington-only Restricted Territories clause, the version-history line on the non-Sweeps-Cash product, the no-refund and 60-day dormancy terms, the JAMS arbitration clause and Miami venue. Cross-checked against the Internet Archive's September 2, 2026 capture, which carries the same version and the same clauses.
• MyPrize homepage and "What Is MyPrize?" - the two-product split, the US-dollar model in California, the My Technology, Inc. operator name and the 18+ age line. Content dates from the site's own RSS feed, which puts the collectibles cluster between April and September 4, 2026.
• California AB 831 bill text and status page - Penal Code Section 337o in full, the four cumulative conditions, the penalty range and the affiliate-liability subsection; chaptered October 11, 2025, effective January 1, 2026.
• MyPrize sitemap index and robots.txt - used to enumerate the site before testing legal paths, so that "no sweepstakes rules page" is a checked absence rather than a failed guess.

New York, Michigan and Washington law as summarised here comes from our own state pages, which carry their own sourcing. We did not contact MyPrize before publishing, hold no account with it, and could not test its geolocation from outside the United States. This article reports what the company publishes about its own products against the text of a statute. It makes no allegation that MyPrize has broken any law, and no regulator or court has ruled on MyPrize Packs.

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