$6.6 million lotto ticket sits in drawer for nearly two weeks
A couple were unaware of their multi-million dollar Powerball windfall for close to two weeks, as their winning ticket sat tucked away in a drawer.
The pair from Silverdale in New Zealand, did know somebody had won a NZD $7.2million ($6.6million) first division prize in the September 12 draw after seeing the news shared online, but they did not check their ticket straight away.
“When my husband asked if I’d heard that a big Powerball prize had been won, I grabbed the ticket out of my handbag and waved it in front of him and jokingly said, ‘Yip – this is the winning ticket’,” the woman recalled.
She then popped it in a drawer with a pile of other old tickets, and while the couple had a bit of a lucky feeling about their entry they said it was not “serious enough to actually check it.”
However on the weekend the wife grabbed the stack of old tickets and when she went to the shops she finally had a chance to scan them.
“As I checked them, I had a few small wins here and there – and then I scanned this ticket and saw ‘First Division winner’ appear on the screen,” said the winner.
She did not want to claim the prize without her husband so tried to stay calm and went home, unaware of how much they had won.
She thought it would be a “nice little win”, but she looked up the results online and checked their ticket, and when her husband arrived home she was able to surprise him with the good news.
“We looked at each other and it kind of felt like confirmation – we’d been talking about it all week, then there it was, as real as anything. It was a totally surreal moment, but also felt right,” the winner’s husband said.
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The couple is still trying to decide what to do with their winnings.
“We’re going to take our time – we feel very lucky and want to make sure the winnings last, both for us and our kids,” the woman said.
