An Upper Marlboro woman and her adult son enjoy playing the Lottery, and their hobby generated a $50,000 prize recently when they purchased a $30 Ace of Spades scratch-off.
The two were together at the Wawa convenience store at 163 South East Crain Highway in the Prince George’s County community when they decided to get the ticket.
“This is the first time that I bought a $30 ticket,” the mother said, explaining she typically buys tickets at the $10 price point or less.
It was her son who was itching to play the game. The ticket has images of the playing card suit spades and a smattering of ace of spades cards. Its look reminded the son of blackjack. He couldn’t resist and walked over to the Lottery kiosk.
“The machine was calling my name,” the son said with a huge smile after claiming the prize April 22 at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore.
The winning team started to scratch away and saw they were picking up multiple prizes of $30, $40 and $50. The son said he got out his calculator and added up the initial prize of $500.
He thought he was done adding but he hadn’t yet scratched the multiplier spot on the ticket. When he did, he uncovered a 100X, boosting the win to $50,000.
“My math wasn’t working. All of those little figures went out the window,” the son said with a laugh when he realized he had more numbers to add.
The mom said she and her son are undecided as to how they will spend their winnings and they were still in shock after claiming.
“We really didn’t believe it. We didn’t want to get too excited until we made our claim,” she said.
Ace of Spades debuted in September of 2025 with three top prizes of $2 million, two of which remain unclaimed. The Upper Marlboro duo are the second ones to claim one of the game’s $50,000 second-tier prizes, leaving one more at that level unclaimed. There are still many prizes remaining ranging from $30 to $5,000.
