Teacher Justin Jones of Austin, TX, has come up with an interesting way to raise money for his family.
He’s using the U.K.-based platform Raffall to hold a sweepstakes for 100 acres of leased mineral rights in Frio County, TX. “These acres sit over the Eagle Ford Shale and Pearsall Shale formations—two of the most potentially productive oil and gas plays in Texas,” he tells Realtor.com®. “You receive a royalty percentage of production revenue if oil or gas is produced. Ours for this particular lease is 22.5%.”
Each entry costs around $4.10, using the British pound sterling.
The winner will receive the 100 acres of mineral rights or $1,000,000 cash, depending on the threshold. For a winner to be selected, 500,000 tickets have to be sold by May 31, 2026.
“If that threshold isn’t met, a winner is still selected and they receive 50% of all proceeds,” says Jones. “It’s all clearly laid out in the sweepstakes terms.”
Jones says they’re already getting a lot of interest, “especially from people who understand oil and gas, and honestly from people who just love the boldness of it.”
Justin Jones poses with family in Texas. (Courtesy of Justin Jones)
Mineral rights are legal property rights that give an owner control over underground resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, and metal ores, independent of ownership of the surface land.
Jones—who’s been the manager of his family’s mineral rights since 2010—says that he was always taught never to sell his mineral rights outright. “If you grow up in Texas and your family’s been here a while, that’s almost a commandment,” he explains.
“You don’t sell mineral rights, you lease them. Once you sell mineral rights, they’re gone. Forever. So most people hold on to them and pass them down from generation to generation. This is what my family has done and will continue to do with the majority of our mineral rights.”
He says mineral owners sign leases for set periods of time with oil and gas companies. “Typically you receive a lease bonus payment per acre upfront. We’ve received lease bonuses ranging from $400 to $2,100 per acre. Then you receive a royalty percentage of production revenue if oil or gas is produced, As for taxes, mineral owners only pay taxes on lease bonuses or production.”
Jones says mineral rights may seem intangible, but they can carry significant worth. “They’re real estate. And value is determined the same way as anything else—location, location, location.”
He adds that the acreage included in the sweepstakes has been under lease for nearly the entire last 15 years, reflecting sustained exploration and industry interest in the surrounding area.
The mineral rights for this land in Frio County, TX, are up for grabs. (Justin Jones)
Jones says his family has had roots in Texas since the late 1860s. “Like a lot of Texas families, our land was accumulated periodically over 150-plus years,” he says. “Our mineral rights number in the thousands of acres.”
Jones’ grandfather, Frank Philip Wittman, worked with the railroad and bought land in Texas in the early 1900s. (Courtesy of Justin Jones)
Over the years, Jones says, would-be buyers have repeatedly tried to purchase those mineral rights.
“We get letters, calls, texts, offers,” he says. “Some are serious. Most are what I’d call ‘hope you don’t know what you have’ offers.”
Roughly 15 years ago, his family signed a lease for $2,100 an acre. “About two weeks after the money was deposited in my bank account, a particularly persistent landman offered me $50 an acre to purchase the mineral rights—not lease them,” he recalls. “He had no idea that I’d leased them already, he just knew that I was living in Chicago at the time and he thought he was going to be able to get a great deal.”
Jones heard about Raffall on the news. “There was a news story out of CBS Texas this summer about a family using Raffall for a large property that sent me down a rabbit hole. I learned that several other Texans were using this platform for their property, and thought our story would be an interesting one for the platform and that it might be a way to get better value for some of our mineral rights rather than receive pennies on the dollar.”
This idea appealed to him because it was creative and outside the box, but Jones says his family first reacted to the idea with silence and confusion. “They didn’t really grasp how the whole idea could come together,” he recalls. “They asked a lot of questions and then were really curious. Once they understood it wasn’t ‘selling cheap,’ but rather creating a unique, compliant sweepstakes opportunity, they got on board.”
Justin Jones poses with his extended family at The Alamo in Texas. (Courtesy of Justin Jones)
He says evolving life circumstances for his extended family inspired him to go this route. “My kids are now grown and are either in college or about to enter college. My brother and my cousins are either of retirement age or quickly approaching retirement,” Jones explains. “Older members of our family have growing health care needs that bring with them rising costs. Essentially, when you’re staring at that reality, you start thinking differently and more creatively.”
Jones says they decided that this was a unique way to get the potential true value of the mineral rights and would prevent them from having seller’s remorse if oil were eventually struck. “My dad always told me to ‘dream big, swing big,’ and I just felt that this followed his advice,” he says. “Innovation beats sitting on the sidelines.”