A Bay of Plenty couple unknowingly had a winning Lotto ticket worth $500,000 sitting in a drawer for nearly four months.
On Tuesday, Lotto announced it was looking for a first division winner who had yet to claim their prize after the New Year’s Day draw on January 1, 2025.
Today, Lotto revealed a Pāpāmoa woman had come foward to claim her prize after finding it in a drawer filled with old tickets.
“Reading the news article about the unclaimed prize prompted me to check old tickets I’d saved in a drawer, and that’s when I noticed one I hadn’t checked…and it was from the New Year’s Day draw.
“If I hadn’t read the article, it would still be unclaimed because I didn’t know I had an unchecked ticket,” she said.
The woman and her husband, who wished to remain anonymous, said they usually checked their tickets manually, saved up a few, and verified them in store. But on this occasion, it had been missed.
Grabbing her laptop, the woman said it was “instantly clear” she was holding the lucky ticket.
“I saw number 8, and then it was like all of the other numbers just lit up – it was so obvious… That’s when I scrolled down and saw the amount. It was amazing.”
She said her husband was out at the time and didn’t want to tell him over the phone, so she decided to keep her mind occupied by mowing the lawn.
When he returned home, the woman held up the ticket, telling him they’d won.
“I looked online at the results – the numbers all matched, so I scrolled down to see the amount – $500,000 – I just thought ‘wow’,” he said.
“It was a struggle to sleep – we kept thinking ‘what happens if we lose the ticket, or someone breaks in and steals it’.
“So we popped it inside a book for safekeeping until we could claim it.”
Their prize has now been safely claimed, and they celebrated by going out for lunch.
“We never in a million years thought we would win a big prize like this, and we are so grateful,” the woman said.
Lotto was also on the hunt for another winner who had yet to claim a ticket for a $200,000 prize, bought from Coastlands Lotto in Paraparaumu.
