Casey Scheidel didn’t plan to return from his spring break trip to Los Angeles with $40 worth of Super PoliGrip as a souvenir.

Then again, carrying around a tube of denture cream is a small price to pay for winning thousands of dollars’ worth of prizes and being a contestant on “The Price is Right.”

Along with four of his friends, Scheidel, senior in horticulture, rented a van and drove to California for a bit of sightseeing and stargazing. The group attended a Tuesday taping of the long-running game show, dressing in bright yellow ISU T-shirts in hopes of making an impression on the show’s producers.

“It’s not like they pull names out of a hat — they know who’s getting up there before the show starts,” Scheidel says.

Apparently, the shirts worked.

“I was one of the first four selected to start the show,” Scheidel says.

“[The producers] said it would get real loud in there, so they put our names up on cue cards. I was the third out of four, and I saw my name come up, and it kind of took me a second to realize what was going on.”

Fortunately, there wasn’t enough time for his nerves to get the better of him. Seconds after the show began taping, Scheidel went from sitting comfortably in the audience to bidding on prizes in Contestants’ Row.

“I had to pass in front of all my friends because I was the farthest in on the row, and they were just going nuts,” he says. “Everyone is so pumped there, so they’re all giving high fives and hugs, and I was so nervous.”

Although tensions were high, Scheidel immediately noticed how different the 300-person studio looks in real life.

“It’s pretty fake — painted cardboard and lights and stuff like that,” Scheidel says. “It seems real small when you’re there, but when you watch it on TV, it seems real big.”

Even though he was selected to be in Contestants’ Row early in the taping, Scheidel hit a few stumbling blocks on his way to the big stage.

“The girl that was bidding behind me kept bidding a dollar more than me, and I was like ‘Oh my god, this girl is totally screwing me,” Scheidel says. “So when we sat down, I told her ‘You’re killing me here,’ and after that she stopped doing it.”

Even Bob Barker, the beloved 80-year-old host of the program, noticed Scheidel’s stroke of bad luck.

“Before I got up on stage, right after we came back from commercial, [Barker] was like ‘Casey, come on, you’re the last one from the original four to get up on stage,'” Scheidel says. “I was like, ‘Oh Bob, I know.'”

After four contestants made their way to the stage, he finally got his big break. Following bids of $500, $800 and $1,200 on a washer and dryer set, Scheidel’s bid of $851 on the $1,150 appliances secured him his first victory of the day.

Finally, Scheidel had his big moment — a little one-on-one time with the Barker.

“He’s kind of a frail kind of old man,” Scheidel says. “I got to shake his hand, but you really don’t want to crush him — the guy’s 80 years old, and I’m all excited and stuff.”

Scheidel says Barker is still a very talented, cordial show host.

“He’s a real great guy, cracking jokes during the commercials and things like that,” Scheidel says. “He’s done the show so much, he doesn’t even use cue cards or anything. He does everything by himself up there.”

Scheidel played The Bonus Game, which required him to guess if the prices of four small prizes, including a snow-cone maker, a humidifier and the infamous denture cream, were higher or lower than the price shown.

Scheidel guessed correctly on three of the four prizes, and the bonus prize — a bedroom set — matched with one of his correct guesses, making him a winner.

“They’re the most perfect, practical prizes I could win,” says Scheidel, who has accepted a job with the grounds crew of the Colorado Rockies baseball team after he graduates in May. “What I wanted for my graduation present was a bedroom set, because I don’t have anything like that here at school. Plus, $40 worth of Super PoliGrip is exactly what everyone needs.”

Scheidel also became a small part of the show’s history. Every contestant on the episode won his or her game, making it the 68th time such an event has happened in the show’s 32-year, 6,000-plus-episode history.

After his game was over, Scheidel had the chance to partake in another staple of the “Price is Right” experience — spinning the big wheel. Luckily, he didn’t embarrass himself by not getting it all the way around on his first try.

“The wheel is really heavy, and they kind of tell you that before you go up there,” he says. “I guess I wanted to spin it as hard as I could.”

Scheidel’s episode airs at 10 a.m. Tuesday on CBS, KCCI Channel 8 in Ames.

Now a seasoned veteran of the game show circuit, Scheidel has some advice for anyone who wishes to follow in his shoes.

“Just be yourself,” Scheidel says. “They want you to be crazy, but they don’t want a wacko up there.”