"I got this thermos for free" Seems perfectly standard to me. "That thermos was for free" sounds terrible: I'd just say "That thermos was free." Stack Trade community contains 183 Q&A communities which includes Stack Overflow, the biggest, most trusted online community for builders to find out, share their knowledge, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTrVZBlXQ93932G_bwrC4lvRYQ9hi-BzXccPrzn0BlNgJSiUFDowMTDkoAEyzcR1K8T6eyq9rdwdvgC/pub