Cumberland player John Hamilton Jr. is grateful to his wife for saving him from giving away his $50,000-winning $5,000,000 LUXE scratch-off ticket.
If the wife of a Cumberland Lottery player had not stepped in, he could have given away a $50,000 winning scratch-off ticket. John Hamilton Jr. was about to settle up a $40 debt to a friend with his $5,000,000 LUXE scratch-off, but it was halted by his wife. Good thing she did, because the ticket was a big winner.
The Air Force veteran enjoys playing the relatively high-priced scratch-off games, and on July 3, while out and about, he stopped at the Sheetz store at 14606 McMullen Highway in Cresaptown and purchased one $5,000,000 LUXE scratch-off, a $50 game. The Cumberland resident folded the unscratched ticket and put it in his back pocket, then promptly forgot all about it.
The next day, John ran into a friend who he owed $40 and remembered he had the scratch-off and initially offered it to his friend to take care of his debt.
“I told him it could be something on it,” he said.
But as the player was handing his friend the scratch-off, his wife stepped in and urged him not to give it away.
“She put her hand between us and intercepted the play,” he said. “That’s when I thought I should play it and see if it really was a winner.”
He sat in his car and began to scratch the game. The first line scratched was already revealing wins. Feeling nervous, John traveled back to Sheetz to let the cashier check the game.
“I showed her and asked, was it real, and she said, looks like it, and that I should scratch the rest of it,” he said.
So he did, revealing more and more wins. So many, that John was too excited to add it all up.
“But I knew it was big,” he smiled.
He asked the cashier to scan the ticket, which she did, confirming it as a third-tier $50,000 winner.
“I was dumbfounded,” said John when he claimed his prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore on July 21. He said he immediately called his wife, because if it were not for her intervening, the winning ticket would have been given away.
Still in disbelief when telling his story, the father said he plans to take his three youngest children on a Disney cruise. He also plans to pay down his mortgage.
The $5,000,000 LUXE scratch-off game launched in February with three $5 million top prizes. There are two of those remaining. Eight $200,000 second-tier prizes also remain unclaimed, as well as nine more of the $50,000 prizes. In addition, there are many prizes ranging from $50 to $10,000 waiting to be found.
