Aren't you guaranteed to win at least $1.00 in the Grand Game? I thought it was always said that if you reach the $1,000 level, and miss on the final guess for the $10K, that "...you fall back to $1".
The verbiage Barker used was close to this: "If you go for it and are wrong, you don't get $10,000 and you lose the $1,000.
My understanding of the rules are that if you do not reach $1,000, you win whatever is on the board ($1.00, $10.00 or $100.00). If you have $1,000.00 and try to win $10,000.00 and select one of the 2 products that are higher than the target price, you end up winning $0.00.
I'm surprised with inflation that the game doesn't go to $20,000, though I believe it's one of the easier games to win at times. The only change I'd make to the game is I'd have the 2 "bad" products' prices be red with white font so it stands out more.
This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only pricing game that does not involve any of the models.