Long-awaited jackpot win rewards player's persistence
By Kate Northrop
LANSING, Mich. — An 84-year-old Michigan lottery player wants to make use of his $481,582 Fantasy 5 jackpot by sharing the riches with his family.
After vying for the Michigan Lottery's Fantasy 5 jackpot for "a long time," an 84-year-old player finally hit his long-awaited stroke of luck with a $481,582 prize.
The Macomb County resident, who chose to remain anonymous in the Lottery's announcement, entered the Aug. 16 Fantasy 5 drawing with a ticket he purchased online.
"After I bought my ticket online, I wrote down my numbers so I could check them the next day," the player told the Lottery.
The numbers he wrote down were 1, 3, 7, 23, and 38.
"The morning after the drawing, I got on MichiganLottery.com to look at the results and saw someone won the jackpot," he recalled to Lottery officials. "I started matching my numbers and went into shock when I realized I was the jackpot winner!"
After trying to win the game's top prize for the longest time, he could finally say he beat the odds of 1 in 575,757 to match all five numbers.
"I have been playing Fantasy 5 for a long time hoping to win big, and I can't believe it finally happened," the winner added.
He visited Lottery headquarters in Lansing to claim his treasured prize, which he plans to share with his loved ones. He'll save whatever is left over.
The Fantasy 5 jackpot currently stands at $124,000 for the next drawing on Thursday, Sept. 11. Tickets cost $1 each.
Players may add the EZmatch feature to their ticket for an additional $1 per play for a chance to win up to $500 or the Double Play feature for a second chance to win up to $110,000 in the nightly Double Play drawing. Players may win prizes in the regular nightly drawing, the Double Play drawing, or both. Fantasy 5 drawings take place every day at 7:29 pm Eastern Time.
The winning numbers, jackpot, and prize amounts can be found on Lottery Post's Michigan Lottery Results page right after each drawing.
Well done, congrats and enjoy every minute of your fantastic win.
Congratulations to him. However, I find it strange that a lot of jackpot winners are elderly.
Same here.
Yes, we do have young winners, but I feel the elderly have hacked the tricks after years of playing 🤣🤣
I want to be a young winner - have more time to enjoy my winnings and be able to take the annuity option 🤣🤣
MM, I am coming for you 🤞🙏
The news items posted here are from people who provide interesting stories. Lottery news is not every single winner, or there would be pages of them every day. Old people are no more likely to win than young people.
The ones who provide interesting stories are the ones who have "lucky" numbers, they use their family's birthdays or ages, they have a routine, and they plan to share their winnings with their families. This tends to skew older.
Younger people are less likely to have a decades-long routine of buying tickets, or so-called "lucky" numbers, and have no children and grandchildren to share the winnings with. This makes their stories relatively boring, and as a result they don't appear here.
If I win, I won't be in the news here, because I have no routine of buying tickets, I have no lucky numbers, and I hate most of my family. I'll write a will and then write out most of them.
I am a young player age <50.
My lottery jackpot win story 😀
"I drove by the store on my way home from work, bought one QP ticket, checked my ticket the next morning and bingo, I won"
End of story.
Reporter: "Tell us more?"
Me: "There is nothing more to tell"
🤣🤣🤣🤣
* There's no feeling on earth like Winning. 👍
I follow Michigan Lottery Facebook page and I also check with Michigan Lottery connect. Most big winners are older. Now, there is the possibility that a younger person is having older relative claim that tickets
The average age of draw players is around 52. The younger players play scratch tickets because they do not have the patience to wait for a nightly draw. Older players easily get confused with the scratch tickets and the price point of most of them are out of their budget.