Ticket Set Aside for Five Months Turns Out to Be Big Winner

TRENTON (May 23, 2025) – Check those junk drawers. You never know what you might find. A couple of batteries for the remote, a rubber band, a pen with a missing cap or, maybe, a million dollars.

A Mercer County couple bought a few Mega Millions tickets back on New Year’s Eve during a visit to the Speedymart Food Store in West Trenton. After returning home, they set the ticket aside and didn’t think much about it until a recent day in May.

“I was in the house and I just opened the drawer and I saw the tickets. I decided to get them checked,” the player said, reflecting on a return visit to the store. “I scanned them. One said ‘not a winner,’ and then another ‘not a winner,’ and then I scanned a ticket that said ‘winner.’”

The player took the ticket back home and checked the ticket against the numbers on the Lottery website, and saw they had matched the five white balls. But they still weren’t sure what they were seeing. “I thought maybe $1,000. Or $10,000. I couldn’t believe it--$1 million?!?”

There was no danger of the ticket expiring as New Jersey Lottery winners have one year from the date of the drawing to file a claim before the ticket expires.

The found money will go to good use.

“For us, it’s more about helping the children, making sure they don’t have debt,” the couple said.

Heading into tonight’s drawing, the jackpot for the recently updated Mega Millions game has crept up to $154 million.

Among the game changes:

• Improved overall odds: Overall odds to win any prize will improve to 1:23 from 1:24 due to the removal of one gold Mega Ball from the game.
• Improved odds to win the jackpot: Odds to win the jackpot will improve to 1:290,472,336 from 1:302,575,350 due to the removal of one gold Mega Ball from the game. The new game will feature 24 Mega Balls instead of the 25 in the current game.
• Larger starting jackpots: Following a jackpot win, the starting jackpot will reset to $50 million instead of the previous $20 million.
• Faster-growing jackpots and bigger jackpots more frequently: Jackpots are expected to grow faster and get to higher dollar amounts more frequently in the new game. The average jackpot win in the new game is estimated to be more than $800 million vs. approximately $450 million in the current game.
• 2X-10X prize increase with built-in random multiplier: Every non-jackpot win will multiply its base prize by 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X automatically. Prizes in the new game will range from $10 to $10 million vs. the $2 to $1 million in the current game.
• Win more than the cost to play: With a minimum prize of $10 on a winning ticket in the new game, every winning ticket will pay out at least double the $5 cost for each play. In the current game, the minimum prize on a winning ticket and cost to play are the same: $2.

The full prize matrix is available here.