A Dubbo man has spent almost a month completely unaware he’d been holding onto a $200,000 winning Instant Scratch-Its ticket, scratching it on Christmas Eve but only realising he’d scored the top prize this week.
The winning $15 Crosswords Book was purchased at Talbragar Street Newsagency, 93-95 Talbragar Street, Dubbo.
Confirming his win with a NSW Lotteries official this morning, the man said he had no idea $200,000 had been sitting in his house all this time.
“We scratched the ticket on Christmas eve,” he explained.
“My fiancé scratched it and told me we’d won $30 or $50.
“We weren’t in a rush to cash it in because we thought it was just a small prize.
“So we went to the newsagency just the other day to claim our prize but when they scanned the ticket they told us they couldn’t pay out the prize.
“That’s when we realised we’d actually won $200,000! We hadn’t read the ticket correctly.
“We couldn’t believe it. Nothing like this has ever happened to us.
“We were both lost for words. It was amazing!”
When asked how they planned to enjoy their windfall, the winning couple had a few ideas.
“We’re both going to buy new cars,” he said.
“And we have a mortgage so we will be able to pay a big chunk off our mortgage.
“It was the best Christmas present and certainly one we will never forget!”
Talbragar Street Newsagency owner Peter Snare said he couldn’t be happier for his local winner.
“How wonderful to hear one of our customers is $200,000 richer!” he exclaimed.
“I’m so happy for him. It’s great to know this has gone to a local here in Dubbo.
“What a great prize! We hope he really enjoys it.
“Over the past 35 years we’ve sold 41 major prizes and we hope this winning streak continues in 2020!”
In 2019, there were 114 Instant Scratch-Its top prize winners across the Lott’s jurisdictions who collectively took home more than $9.61 million in top prizes.
During this same time, Instant Scratch-Its players enjoyed more than 27.1 million wins across all prize tiers worth more than $208.8 million. This equates to more than half a million dollars won on Instant Scratch-Its every day.