The Scratch

From stocking stuffers to a stuffed wallet

Nebraska Lottery Scratch tickets are a popular item to give as Christmas gifts, but for several Nebraska Lottery players, those gifts turned out to be a pretty big windfall.

On Thursday, December 26, the day after Christmas, players started arriving at Nebraska Lottery claim centers across the state to claim the prizes they’d won.

Here at the Lincoln office, we had two players claim $1,000 prizes. One of them was for the $5 Powerball Mega Millions Scratch ticket, the other was a $5 Cool Cash Scratch ticket. Both players had received their Scratch tickets as gifts and wound up getting the most valuable present they’d ever found under the tree.

Later that day, we had a visit from a player from Papillion who received a $5 Wheel of Fortune ticket as a gift.

The player scratched off their winning numbers and wound up winning the $50,000 top prize!

While those players asked not to have their photos taken, we had a visit from Lee Johnson of Lincoln. The other winners had been gifted Scratch tickets for Christmas, but Lee was playing Santa Claus.

Lee said he sometimes collects his winning Scratch tickets in the glove box of his vehicle and cashes them all in at once. This year, he decided to take his winnings and buy more Scratch tickets to share with his family.

While driving home from work on Monday evening, he stopped at the Super C at 501 West A Street in Lincoln, a convenience store he doesn’t usually go to, he said. He cashed in his winning tickets and bought a good mix of $1, $3, $5, and $20 Scratch tickets and brought them to his family’s Christmas celebration.

On Wednesday, Lee handed out the tickets to his family, keeping some for himself to scratch off. He started scratching and, when he got done scratching the $5 Money Clip ticket, he could hardly believe his eyes.

Lee had won $50,000 and said his family tried telling him it must be a gag Scratch ticket, but it was real.

“Your heart just drops,” he said. “I was flabbergasted, floored.”

Lee said he doesn’t know what he’s going to do with his winnings yet, but is pretty excited about the prize.