Along with the revelry and family bonding moments that make Christmas so wonderful for so many, the 2025 holiday season will be remembered by a Delaware-Maryland clan for a specific gift: a Break the Bank scratch-off. After all, how often does someone open a present worth $50,000?
“It’s sort of a joke in the family,” a Delaware man told officials. “Whenever someone asks me what I want for Christmas, I tell them cash.” This request, the family patriarch said Jan. 14 when he claimed his prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore, is usually ignored, but this time a relative took him seriously, giving him an envelope full of money and a scratch-off ticket. “Everyone laughed when I opened it. I thought it was hilarious.”
A few minutes later the happy mood in the room was elevated, and then grew ten-fold.
Upon scratching his gift ticket, the former police officer was shocked to see what he thought was a $5,000 win.
“We all started celebrating, it was fantastic,” he said.
As the ticket was passed around in the ecstatic group, one of them took a closer look.
“When she announced that it was really a $50,000 winner, everybody got really quiet for a moment, then it exploded,” the winner recounted.
The top prize Break the Bank winning ticket was purchased from the 7-Eleven at 705 Greenway Road in Glen Burnie. The $5 ticket arrived on retailers’ shelves in August 2025 with eight $50,000 top prize winners available. Three of these remain in circulation along with three second-tier winners good for $5,000 each.
Owners of the Anne Arundel County convenience store receive a $500 bonus for selling the top prize ticket.
Their Break the Bank winnings will be dedicated to a family trip, according to the Delaware resident. “That, and our grandchildren. We can do a lot of spoiling with this.”
