Why You Should Always Check Your Powerball Ticket
When people hear about a massive lottery jackpot like the current $1.8 billion Powerball prize, attention instantly shifts to the big question: who will win? And if that winner is found, there’s little doubt the ticket will be cashed in. After all, walking away with nearly two billion dollars is something no one would want to miss. But here’s the surprising truth—sometimes even jackpot-winning tickets go unclaimed. Over the years, a handful of them have been left behind, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even more shocking is what happens with the smaller prizes. Every year, billions of dollars in winnings are simply never collected. According to experts, about one percent of all lottery revenues go unclaimed, and when you’re talking about the scale of ticket sales across the United States, that’s well over a billion dollars lost each year. The money is technically won, but because the tickets are never turned in, the prizes vanish.
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One striking example came in Ohio, where a winning ticket sold at a Walmart in 2024 would have given its owner either $138 million paid over 20 years or a $65.8 million lump sum. Nobody claimed it. And that’s not an isolated case—eight Powerball or Mega Millions jackpots have gone unclaimed in the last quarter century, totaling about $646 million, or more than $800 million when adjusted for inflation. While that’s a small percentage of the 520 jackpots awarded in that time, the fact that anyone could let such a fortune slip away is almost unbelievable.
But here’s where the numbers really pile up. It’s not the jackpots that contribute the most to unclaimed winnings—it’s the smaller prizes. Millions of players toss aside tickets because they assume that if the jackpot wasn’t theirs, then the ticket is worthless. That assumption leaves countless $4 wins, $50 prizes, and even million-dollar payouts sitting uncollected. For example, a ticket that matches all five regular numbers in Powerball or Mega Millions—but misses the final Powerball or Mega Ball—can still be worth $1 million or even $2 million with certain options. And yet, many of these tickets never get redeemed.
Why does this happen? A lot of it comes down to human behavior. People often stop checking after hearing the jackpot winner was somewhere far away. Others shove tickets into a drawer or pocket and forget about them. Some simply don’t know how many prize levels exist.
Different states also have different deadlines to claim winnings, so a ticket can expire if it’s not turned in on time. Just recently, a $50,000 winning ticket in Louisiana expired without anyone stepping forward. And while most lottery spending actually goes toward instant scratch-off games, which are checked more quickly and less likely to be forgotten, the same principle applies—winnings can only matter if they’re claimed.
So the next time you grab a Powerball ticket, remember this: even if you don’t become the headline-making billionaire, that slip of paper could still be worth something. It might be enough for a night out, a vacation, or even a life-changing sum. But only if you take the time to check.
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