Show-Me State Times

A Missouri Lottery player experienced an unexpected windfall at Hamilton Bowl in Hamilton. The player, who purchased a "$5,000,000 Fortune" Scratchers ticket at the bowling alley located at 601 S. Hughes St., won a $50,000 prize.

"When I was packing up my bowling stuff, I remembered I had some winning tickets in my purse, so I thought I’d use them to go buy a ticket,” the winner explained. She selected the "$5,000,000 Fortune" ticket after consulting with the clerk and decided to try her luck despite never having played a $50 ticket before.

Upon returning home and scratching off the ticket later that night, she discovered her win. “The very first number I scratched was 63 and right under that was $50,000!” she recounted. Excitedly sharing the news with her husband while he was in the shower, she exclaimed, “I burst in there and I was like I won $50,000!” Her husband responded incredulously: “No way!”

Even after verifying the ticket together, disbelief lingered until they confirmed it by scanning it at the bowling alley the following day. “All night long I’m thinking that this isn’t real,” she said. "It wasn’t until I took it back to the bowling alley the next day and scanned it that I thought, ‘This is real.’”

The "$5,000,000 Fortune" game has awarded over $110 million in prizes thus far. There are still more than $142.5 million in unclaimed prizes available for players of this $50 game, including a top prize of $5 million along with three prizes of $1 million and 21 additional $50,000 prizes.

In Caldwell County last fiscal year alone, lottery players claimed over $1 million in total Missouri Lottery prizes. Retailers benefited from more than $101,000 in commissions and bonuses while education programs received over $693,000 from appropriated Lottery proceeds.