Every winner has a story.
For Margaret in Schuylkill County, the tale starts with a stocking on Christmas morning.
She had asked her husband for a necklace this Christmas. And he decided to put some PA lottery scratch-off tickets in there too.
Margaret opened the necklace and expressed her gratitude. Then, she started scratching.
$250,000 Holiday Gift scratch-off
She hit for 70 bucks. Then, she won $250.
No, wait a second. That wasn’t a period. It was a comma. Could it be?
Did she really win $250,000? On Christmas?
She sure did.
“Wait, are these real tickets?’ Margaret wondered.
“Yeah, why?” her husband replied.
They checked the scratch-off ticket on the PA lottery app and confirmed the Christmas surprise. Margaret and her husband, who bought the ticket at a Sunoco in Kulpmont, Northumberland County had just won $250,000.
And interestingly enough, it was a scratch-off ticket named “Holiday Gift” that brought the jackpot.
“Top that next year buddy!” Margaret joked to her husband.
007 lottery ticket brings $300,000 jackpot to Fayette County
Recently all across Pennsylvania, there have been lottery triumphs and tales much like Margaret’s.
You see, every winner has a story.
In Fayette County, a player named Andrea hit it big on a James Bond-themed 007 scratch-off ticket. Andrea was diagnosed with lupus and had such severe lung issues that doctors estimated she only had one more year to live in 2015.
Medicine has turned her life around. And the occasional scratch-off ticket brings her joy.
“I like to scratch,” Andrea said.
One day recently, she started scratching to reveal the numbers on a JAMES BOND 007 ticket.
Zeroes appeared. Five of them to be exact, all at the end of a $300,000 prize.
“I was at home in my living room and I went into the kitchen and dropped to my knees giving God praise – totally in shock,” Andrea said. “I was super excited! It’s been a blessing.”
Andrea said she plans to donate some of her big prize too, sharing the winnings with her church, her son and her brothers.
“I’ll buy my wonderful fiancée some extra tools too,” she added.
100X Monopoly ticket delivers $3 million to Lackawanna County
Other big winners in Pennsylvania have earned prizes, but their full stories have yet to be revealed. Winners are only identified after prizes are claimed and the tickets are validated.
Soon, a name will be attached to a few other giant jackpots. Those include:
- A winner from Middletown in Lackawanna County who won a massive $3 million prize this week on a Monopoly 100X scratch-off ticket. That ticket came from the Fast Lane Mart at 215 South Main Street in Taylor. The store will receive a $10,000 bonus for selling the ticket.
- In addition, a Pennsylvania Lottery Cash 5 with Quick Cash ticket worth $1.8 million was sold in Philadelphia. The ticket from the Dec. 30 drawing was sold at Luzerne Laundromat on North 6th Street, state lottery officials announced Monday. The winning numbers were 17-26-32-35-38. The store will also receive a $10,000.
- Another drawing on Dec. 30th also paid dividends in Lebanon County. A winning ticket from the Match 6 Lotto drawing on Dec. 30th worth $680,000 came from a GIANT grocery story in Cleona. The ticket correctly matched all six winning numbers, 6-9-13-16-29-30, to capture the jackpot. The store also receives a $5,000 bonus for the win.
- And also on Dec. 30, a player bought a winning Keno ticket worth $100,000 in Luzerne County. That ticket sold at the Dallas Kwik-Mart at 2384 Memorial Highway, which will receive a $500 bonus. Keno has awarded more than $114.6 million in prizes since the game launched in May 2018.
PA Lottery’s 2020-21 fiscal year paid out record prizes
It won’t be long before more stories arrive from the Pennsylvania lottery.
In the fiscal year of 2020-21, the Pennsylvania lottery’s traditional game prizes paid out more than $3.5 billion to winners, an increase of nearly $612.4 million over the previous year.
In addition, more than $772.1 million in prizes were paid out to winners of PA online lottery games. That total was an increase of $135 million from the prior fiscal year and does not even include prizes paid to winners who purchased draw games online.
More lottery prizes to come
The winners just keep coming.
Every one of them has a story.
And more will be arriving soon. Including for the first-ever $50 PA Lottery scratch-off which comes with top prizes of $500,000.
Lead image via Shutterstock.
