Clean out your junk drawers!

By Kate Northrop

WEST TRENTON, N.J. — One New Jersey couple demonstrated why it's important to periodically clean out your junk drawers after they discovered a winning $1 million Mega Millions lottery ticket had been sitting in theirs for five months.

A New Jersey couple found that a winning lottery ticket for a $1 million Mega Millions prize had been sitting unchecked in their junk drawer for five months, which dated all the way back to New Year's Eve.

On New Year's Eve at the cusp of 2025, a Mercer County couple decided to stop at Speedymart Food Store on Parkway Avenue in West Trenton to buy a few Mega Millions tickets for the drawing occurring later that evening. Once they returned home, they set the tickets aside, and it was forgotten until one recent day in May.

"I was in the house, and I just opened the drawer, and I saw the tickets," the anonymous player told the New Jersey Lottery. "I decided to get them checked."

The player, who declined to offer their name publicly in the Lottery's press release, returned to a retailer to check the rogue tickets.

"I scanned them," they recalled. "One said 'not a winner,' and then another 'not a winner,' and then I scanned a ticket that said 'winner.'"

The player then took the winning ticket back home and checked the results, crosschecking the numbers against the ones shown online, until they realized they had matched all five white balls in the Dec. 31, 2024 drawing.

"I thought maybe $1,000. Or $10,000," the winner related. "I couldn't believe it — $1 million?"

The winning numbers for the Mega Millions drawing on New Year's Eve were 13, 22, 27, 29, and 35, with gold Mega Ball 1. The couple had beaten the odds of 1 in 12.6 million to win the game's $1 million second-tier prize.

Although five months had gone by with the ticket sitting unchecked in the drawer, there was still plenty of time for the pair to claim the ticket had they not rediscovered it in May. Lottery winners in New Jersey have one year from the date of the drawing to claim prizes.

The couple said the prize will go to good use — it will give them the chance to provide their children with financial support.

"For us, it's more about helping the children, making sure they don't have debt," the couple expressed to Lottery staff.

The next Mega Millions drawing will take place on Friday, May 30 at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a $189 million jackpot.

Mega Millions is currently offered for sale in 45 states, plus Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are Tuesdays and Fridays at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Tickets cost $5 each.

The Mega Millions winning numbers are published at USA Mega (www.usamega.com) minutes after the drawing takes place.