When it c
omes to the lottery, there are numerous different ways to win. The official retailer of the National Lottery seems to come up with a new game every other year, meaning that those who feel as though they need to be completists end up buying tickets for the Lotto, EuroMillions, Thunderball and Set For Life games, amongst numerous others. Scratch cards are another way to win, with countless different ones offered in the shops of lottery retailers up and down the land – that is before you even get into the realm of the scratch cards offered by charity lotteries, etc.
If you want to win money and think that scratch cards are the way forwards, you might well wonder just how much it is that you’re likely to win through them. We know that you can win tens of millions through EuroMillions and several millions courtesy of the Lotto, but how much can you expect to win thanks to the world of scratch cards? It is less than a EuroMillions win or a Lotto rollover, but you might just be surprised by how high the prizes are on some of the scratch cards that you can buy in the shops around the United Kingdom, where millions can be on offer.
Winning Big on the Scratch Cards 183u6z
If you were to be told that you would be promised the jackpot of any National Lottery product that you bought, scratch cards wouldn’t even enter most people’s thinking. That is because the prizes on scratch cards tend to be lower than the likes of the Lotto and the EuroMillions, whilst those lotteries having rollovers means that they are all but untouchable when it comes to prize money. Even so, there have been some big scratch card prizes on offer over the years. The National Lottery occasionally goes big on its prizes for scratch cards, as you’ll see here:
Four £4 Million Prizes 2333z
In 2014, the owner of a Spar shop franchise, Ashok Shukla, was working when a man came in to his scratch card win. Shukla ran the card through his machine twice, with the information he received back both times saying the same thing: don’t pay out, ask him to call the hotline. The man was calm, in spite of the fact that he had become just the second person in the United Kingdom to win £4 million thanks to the £4Million Gold scratch card that he had bought. There were only ever four of them in circulation, with the odds of winning being one in 4,232,860.
A short while later, the winner, who chose to remain anonymous, stuck his head back into the shop to say that it was real and that the National Lottery were going to visit him the following week. Speaking of the matter, Shukla said, “We are very lucky with scratchcards. We were working it out and we believe that in the 18 years since the lottery started, we have sold a million pounds worth of scratchcards but probably had about £5m of prizes paid out through us. I always tell people spend what you can afford, it’s a bit of fun and it benefits good causes as well.”
£4 Million Blue for Road Worker 5n2z6i
Another winner of the massive amount was Ross Hearst. The road worker in Portadown, County Armagh, was expecting his first child with his wife Jocelyn and went into a shop to buy some bits. There was one scratch card left on the shelf in the Spar shop of Gilpinstown Road in Lurgan, so Hearst decided to treat himself to it. He was amazed to discover the win when he scratched the card back at work and then struggled to get through to Camelot thanks to the fact that his hand was shaking so much that he kept pressing the wrong button on the phone.
He said, “I would normally buy a scratch-card every week but never in my wildest dreams did I ever dream of winning such a huge amount. In fact, I had just won a tenner on a scratchcard and when I was in the store, I decided to exchange it for a £4 Million Blue scratchcard. I don’t normally buy the £10 scratchcards but this one was the last one on the shelf so I just had an urge to buy it.” He tried to call his wife, who failed to answer for the first 22 calls and then hung up on him during the 23rd, thinking he was winding her up. It was only when she called back that he explained it was true.
The Pair That Won £4 Million – But Didn’t z2gj
In 2019, Jon Watson and Mark Goodram thought that they had hit the big time. Having gone into their local Londis in Bolton, they bought a scratch card and decided to scratch the s there and then. As they began to make a note of what the card was saying, it dawned on the pair that they had won £4 million. They jumped for joy, being caught on the shop’s CCTV footage celebrating their huge win. On the 22nd of April that year, they got in touch with Camelot in order to confirm the win and claim their money, letting slip that they didn’t have a bank to deposit the money into.
The problem that they had was that the scratch card had been bought using a bank card. It later turned out that the card belonged to a man named Joshua Addyman, with the pair having bought the card through fraudulent means. Not only did the win mean that they would end up in prison, they also didn’t get to keep the money. The chances of winning the jackpot were about one in four million, meaning that they were incredibly unlucky to have got themselves into a situation that would then end up landing them in jail for their fraudulent actions.
£4 Million for Pub Worker h176m
When Amadou Gillen was on a break from his job working in a pub kitchen in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, he decided to but a couple of scratch cards. He was pleased enough when the first card told him that he’d won £10, but even more delighted when the second resulted in him becoming a multi-millionaire. The father-of-two was ‘screaming and dancing inside’, but decided to keep his win quiet until the end of his shift. Given that he didn’t finish work for, appropriately enough, another four hours, there’s no question that he showed remarkable discipline.
Having won £4 million and £10, Gillen was hoping to head back to Gambia, where he was born, in order to see family, as well as to his driving test so that he could buy his first car. Having worked at McDonald’s when he was doing his apprenticeship, Gillen had worked at the put for five years when he struck it lucky. It was another example of someone winning £4 million in the United Kingdom, though most scratch cards available nowadays are not worth that much. At the time of writing, the biggest win on offer from Camelot is £2 million, with other cards being worth £1 million.
£250,000 Turns into £3.75 Million 6f4w6k
If you bought a scratch card and found out that you’d won £250,000, there’s a fair chance that you’d be reasonably ecstatic. Having spent £10 on a Mega Rich scratch card, that is exactly what happened to Simon Rustle. The big moment came when he clocked that he’d won £250,000 not once, but every year for 15 years for a total payout of £3.75 million. He bought the scratch card after having won £120 on a football bet the day before, choosing to ‘splash out’ after collecting his winnings. He scratched it immediately, getting the shop assistant to confirm the win.
It was only when he spoke to a Camelot representative the following day that Rustage was told the actual size of his win. In the aftermath, he confirmed that he wasn’t going to let it change his life much, going into work for a full shift and saying that he didn’t think he’d end up selling his semi-detached house. He planned to give some money to his kids and to ensure that his granddaughter, who was 20 months at the time, had a good future. Most people had nice things to say about him, with even his ex-wife being pleased about his big win on the scratch card.
£3 Million for Care Worker 1r6p3i
Susan Richards was 49-years-old when she had just finished her night shift as a care worker. Exhausted by a gruelling shift, she toyed with forgoing her trip to the supermarket to do her big shop. In the end, though, she realised that she needed to do it or else wouldn’t have enough in, so she went to shops and decided to buy a scratch card when she spotted that she had the exact right change to do so, which was made up of four £2, one £1, one 50p, a couple of 20ps and a 10p. “Taking this as a sign I had a quiet chuckle to myself and bought the treat and left the shop,” she said.
The ticket she bought was for the £250 Million Cash Spectacular game, playing it in her car before she left for home. The third number she scratched off matched one of the winning s, but she was amazed when she scratched off the prize to discover she’d won £3 million. Having gone back into the store, the manager helped her to call Camelot and the win, with Richards planning to take her family to the United States of America with some of the money. A believer in fate, Richards felt like her dad, who had died ten years earlier, was there with her when a feather fell onto the car windscreen.
£2 Million on Monopoly Deluxe 6h211s
Ian Black was working in a factory and developed something of a ritual, heading into a shop on the way home in order to buy a Monopoly Deluxe scratch card. Road works one day meant that the 61-year-old briefly toyed with driving home another way, rather than face the delays. In the end, he stuck to his routine and will be delighted that he did so. He headed out of the shop to scratch the card, letting out a scream when he realised that he was a winner. When his wife saw his face at home, she feared that something had happened to the dog because he looked so shocked.
Having realised that they had won £2 million, they immediately started making plans. The first thing that they wanted to do was to spend money on an operation for their rescue dog, Meg. Having five children and ten grandchildren at the time, the Blacks were planning on spending more time with their family in the wake of Ian’s decision to hand in his notice at his work. A Carlisle United fan, as well as a rugby lover, Black hoped to head to Twickenham to watch England play, whilst Sandra would be getting a new Volvo and the pair would buy a new TV.