There are people out there who won't buy lottery tickets unless the jackpot is over $100 million, thinking that anything less isn't worth winning.
But one Newark, Ohio man cashed in on a Mega Millions ticket for a cool $175,000, matching five of the six winning numbers from the $20 million Mega Millions drawing April 20. Unbeknownst to him, the winning ticket sat idly in his car for nearly a month.
G. Robert Frame stopped at the Beverage Source at 1191 N. Church St. Monday, and decided to bring in a stack of old tickets he had in his car -- among them the month-old winner -- just to see if any of them were $5 or $10 winners.
"It was a shock to me," said Frame, deputy registrar at the Licking County Office of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. "The tickets were about a month old. I don't check them all the time."
He gave the stack of tickets -- the winning one being a $5 auto-lotto ticket -- to Beverage Source owner Mike Benninghoff, who regularly scans old tickets through the lottery computer for his customers.
"A lot of times, they have no idea what they've got in their hand," he said.
Benninghoff received a sign from the Ohio Lottery just after the April 20 drawing indicating his store had sold a ticket to a $175,000 winner.
"I said to him, 'You have no idea what you've got here, do you?'" Benninghoff said. "Then I pointed to the sign and said, 'That's yours.'"
Frame isn't planning on doing anything crazy with his winnings, like buying a yacht or sports car.
"I'm just going to use it for my retirement and share a little bit with the kids," he said.
After taxes, Frame will walk away with slightly more than $125,000.
"It knocked the socks off of me," he said. "All my friends say I'm the luckiest person they know."
"auto-lotto" = Ohio for quick-pick.