They’re twice-a-week Lottery players, a husband and wife team revealed May 26 when visiting headquarters to claim a $176,777 progressive jackpot prize delivered by a FAST PLAY Platinum Payout ticket. The Delaware pair still appeared in shock, and not just because of the substantial prize they’d won.
“We really thought it would have been Mega Millions or Powerball that brought us here,” they confessed. The tickets they buy each week are almost exclusively for the two multi-state jackpot games, so they were confident if they won big, it would be thanks to one of those games.
Errands brought them across the Maryland-Delaware border on May 24, and their nearly empty gas thank brought them to the Dash In convenience store at 7201 Main Street in the Wicomico County community of Willards.
“I hadn’t bought tickets in Maryland for a while so I went in the store,” one half of the team reported. Once inside, along with their regular Lottery favorites, she added something different, that $10 FAST PLAY Platinum Payout ticket.
“We hadn’t had much success recently, so I thought a new game might change things up.”
Boy, did it. She didn’t even glance at her FAST PLAY ticket at first, just immediately ran it through the prize check scanner. The message on the device convinced her to take a closer look.
“It told me to, ‘Take to Lottery.’ I’d never seen that before, but guessed it meant good news. That’s when my hands started shaking.” Once outside, the two studied the ticket and soon realized they’d won big – $176,777 kind of big.
“We had to calm ourselves down before getting back on the road. It took a little while.”
Platinum Payout debuted early in April with 12 progressive jackpot prizes, and this is the first to be won. The game’s progressive jackpot starts at $75,000 and increases incrementally each time a non-jackpot winning ticket is sold.
All six of the game’s $50,000 second-tier prizes remain.
The Dash In store that sold the ticket receives a $1,000 bonus for selling the top-tier winner.
