We got a letter this week that was truly a blast from the past. It came from a Colorado man, who said he’d found a lottery ticket in his mother’s paperwork after her recent passing.
The man had signed the back of it and mailed it to us, which is what you would do if you wanted to have a ticket checked or cashed. But this particular ticket was purchased for a Powerball® drawing nearly 28 years ago.
The ticket must have been kept somewhere out of the light, because it was in great condition. It looked like it had just been printed from the terminal.
I’ve included a photocopy of it here. Back when the ticket was purchased, Powerball had only been around for three years. The game got its start in April 1992. And check out the $5 million jackpot from back then! The definition of a “big jackpot” certainly has changed over time!
Do you notice something missing from the ticket that’s a standard feature on those produced today? There’s no barcode. For that and many other technology-related reasons, today’s lottery equipment can’t read a ticket from years ago. And, any prize this particular ticket might have won would have expired in 1996.
For curiosity’s sake, I was able to look up the winning numbers from the Powerball drawing on Oct. 4, 1995. I circled the numbers on the ticket that matched the winning numbers that night.
As you can see, four separate plays on the ticket each matched one of the white balls in the drawing, which would not have won a prize.
This story does show the importance of checking your tickets, though!
I let the man know we are sorry to learn of his mother’s passing and we wish him well with the many details that follow in that situation. I mailed the original ticket back to him along with a print-out of the winning numbers from the drawing so he can put his mind at ease.
And I thanked him for a look at lottery history!
Wadda goof.
Posted by: Scott Wayne | September 03, 2023 at 11:24 AM