A New Plymouth man who scored himself a massive $24 million in Saturday's Lotto draw decided to keep his celebration low-key with a takeaway and a couple of beers.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a regular Lotto player who picked up his usual Triple Dip ticket while running errands in town. He wasn't in a rush to check his ticket, only remembering on Wednesday morning when he went to grab breakfast.
"I opened the pantry to decide what I wanted to eat and noticed my ticket sat there, so I thought it would be a good time to check it," he said.
"I pulled out my phone and went to the website to check the winning numbers, I was drawn to the bottom of the ticket and once I realised I had three numbers, my eyes were skipping ahead trying to finish checking it quickly.
"I saw I had all the numbers… and then the Powerball, number five jumped out at me."
The man remained calm as he jumped in his car and headed to a Lotto store to check his ticket.
"When I pulled up, I saw a sign in the window saying that night's prize was back to $4 million, that’s when it started to feel real," the man said.
He handed the ticket over to a lady and the counter who checked it and without saying anything showed him the prize on the receipt and smiled.
"It's hard to describe how I was feeling, I think I was so focussed on filling in the paperwork and making sure it was confirmed that my mind couldn't really process that I had won $24 million - the odds are so low, I kept thinking, how jammy is that!" he said.
Arriving home, the man took some time to sit and think about his win, but hunger got the better of him and he decided to drive back into town for some lunch.
"It was a funny drive, I passed some lovely houses and thought 'I could buy one of those right now'," he said.
"Same with car showrooms, I've never been the kind of person to want extravagant things – it's not me, but I just kept thinking how nice it would be to drive around in a flashy red sports car.
"Everything was suddenly possible, and my mind was in overdrive."
Instead of buying a sports car, he settled for a quick lunch before heading home to finish off some work.
That evening, the man decided he needed to have a little celebration so he went to grab a takeaway and a couple of beers and celebrated being a millionaire.
He plans to use the money to travel and eventually buy some land and a property somewhere in New Zealand.
The man is the 17th Powerball First Division winner of 2022.
