“Amateur Golfer” of Baltimore had no idea his vehicle was home to a $50,000 winning Powerball ticket.
Baltimore man discovers big win after store employees urge him to check older tickets
“The story of my win is stupid crazy,” said the Baltimore golfer who plays Mega Millions and Powerball each week like clockwork. The 56-year-old is a regular Lottery customer at Quick Mart in Towson, where he stopped at his usual time on March 26 to buy his Powerball ticket for that night’s drawing.
He stashed that $2 quick-pick ticket with an unchecked stack of tickets in his vehicle and went on with his life as a married father of one who works in local government. What he didn’t know was that his store, Quick Mart, sold a $50,000 third-tier winning ticket in the March 26 Powerball drawing. A Lottery celebration banner proclaiming the lucky sale was delivered to the store, but no one stepped forward to claim the prize.
Our anonymous winner, who is going by the nickname “Amateur Golfer” for Lottery publicity, stopped in again to buy his weekly batch of Mega Millions and Powerball tickets. “They are super friendly there,” he said. The employees filled him in on the unclaimed $50,000 winning ticket sold during the time of day he usually visits the store and asked if he had checked his ticket from the March 26 drawing. “Amateur Golfer” had not done so and he fetched the stack of unchecked tickets from his vehicle.
The first Powerball ticket carried a $2 prize and the third one he scanned on the ticket checker showed a prize that he mistakenly thought was $500. “She burst out laughing,” he said, when he asked if the store employee could cash the ticket because he was going out of town on a golf trip. “She said, ‘You didn’t read that right. No, no, no, you missed a couple of zeros.’”
The employees told him to sign the ticket in the store, took photos of it and he went home to lock it in his safe until he returned from his golf trip. Neither his daughter nor his wife believed his win was real.
“Amateur Golfer” filled his buddies in on the story of his Lottery luck and treated them to a steak dinner, along with a family with three kids sitting at a nearby table. His friends suggested his late grandmother and mother, who passed away in 2021, may have sent some Lottery luck his way and he said treating the unknown family to dinner is his way of paying it forward.
His wife still didn’t believe “Amateur Golfer” was a big winner until he got on the phone with her while in the Lottery Winner’s Circle. He showed her the room and his giant check. He plans to buy a new 3 Callaway Hybrid golf club with his prize and will put the rest of the windfall into the bank.
Meanwhile, the Powerball jackpot is still rolling. The estimated annuity value for the Wednesday, April 13 drawing is $302 million, with an estimated cash option of $187 million.
