A Warracknabeal couple are planning to travel around Australia in their caravan in style after discovering they won $150,000 on an Instant Scratch-Its ticket – a prize they initially thought was only $15,000.
The winning $10 Jumbo Crosswords ticket was purchased at Warracknabeal Newsagency, 63-65 Scott Street, Warracknabeal.
Speaking with an official from The Lott this morning, the Victorian duo said they were still in shock to discover their prize was actually ten times more than what they originally thought.
“My husband loves the Crosswords Instant Scratch-Its tickets,” the winning woman said.
“When he first scratched the ticket, he thought we’d won $500 and we were happy with that!
“So we went to the newsagency to check it and the lady there had this huge smile on her face and she said it was more than $4,000, but she couldn’t confirm exactly what it was.
“When we went home, we checked again and we realised we had more words than we initially thought. So then we thought we’d won $15,000!
“I said to my husband ‘God, wouldn’t it have been nice to have one more word’.
“My husband checked it about twenty times again to be sure and then he looked at me and said, ‘Guess what, we have one more word!’.
“We got all our family to check it after that and wow!
“We were so excited! It was completely surreal.
“It still hadn’t sunk in though, so until we went into The Lott head office, we didn’t want to get too excited in case we were reading the ticket wrong.
“We didn’t have much sleep after that, but now it’s been confirmed, it’s incredible.
“It is such good news!
“Honestly, I am still gobsmacked now.”
When asked how the pair intended to enjoy their instant windfall, the elated woman said a sleepless night meant plenty of planning.
“All we’ve been doing is making plans for this prize,” she laughed.
“We would love to do some travelling around Australia in a caravan – a stylish caravan!
“It’s going to be done in style.”
Warracknabeal Newsagency owner Sajive Manjuparambil said the team was thrilled for the winning couple.
“We are very excited!” he said.
“It’s been a while since we sold a major prize, so we couldn’t be happier.
“It was an incredible moment, and we hope they really enjoy their prize.
“Hopefully this is the beginning of a winning streak.”
In 2020, there were 177 Instant Scratch-Its top prize winners across The Lott’s jurisdictions who collectively took home more than $16 million in top prizes.
During this same time, Instant Scratch-Its players enjoyed more than 32.3 million wins across all prize tiers worth more than $281.17 million. This equates to more than three-quarters of a million dollars won on Instant Scratch-Its every day.