With lottery jackpot nearing $1 billion, customers flock to this favorite lucky store
On Knightdale Boulevard, the Eagles Express store has sold so many winning lottery tickets that the front windows are plastered with fliers announcing $1,000 prizes.
And that’s just the front door.
Inside the store, a dozen more hang behind a stack of Michelob Ultra boxes, another dozen by the coffee machine and a few dozen extra alongside the table where customers fill out their Mega Millions cards — a piece of furniture decorated with a pair of golden horseshoes.
Employees there used to hang winning $500 scratch-off tickets by the front counter, but things got too cluttered. They only put the fliers on the front window to provide some shade.
“We had one lady win $200,000 on a $5 ticket,” said Annie Lomison, a cashier, gesturing down the street. “She lives right over there. Another lady who won hasn’t been in for a while because of the pandemic, but she was just here.”
The get-rich-quick crowd has intensified in this corner store, which ranked third in North Carolina last year for overall ticket sales.
Giant Mega Millions jackpot
At $970 million, the Mega Millions jackpot is the second-highest ever for the popular number-picking game, and the third-highest jackpot of any kind in U.S. history. And it may push higher before Friday’s drawing.
The treasure chest, an annuity worth a $716 million in cash, started piling up in September. And while odds of raking in the whole thing come in at roughly 1 in 303 million, somebody always wins. Five people took it in all of 2020, and two North Carolinians have scored the big prize since North Carolina joined the 45 states that play.
Part of its success stems from its online play, an option offered to Mega Millions players since 2013 and now available for four big-money games. But with this week’s similarly high PowerBall jackpot pushing the games into the headlines — a Maryland player won after Wednesday’s drawing — many still remained unaware they could gamble $2 on a ticket without risking COVID-19 at the corner store. Since July, $9.9 million Mega Millions tickets sold online, or roughly 15%.
At Eagles Express, Lomison said no lucky rainbow sprouts from the roof, no leprechauns man the food trucks in the parking lot and no rabbits feet can be found in the trash cans out front. The store sits at a high-traffic corner and sells gobs of tickets on any day, she said, so it figures they’d host their share of winners.
A rack full of winning-number advice guides stands at the counter, where luckless players can purchase guidance pamphlets written by Mr. Numeral, Harry the Horse or Professor Hitt. Another guide that translates recent dreams into lottery picks was sold out Thursday.
Not everyone can — or does — win
But the self-service ticket scanner at the back of the store testified to the thousands of also-rans who pass through the store’s door. Under it sits a trash can of discarded tickets, where Ed Dean stubbornly penciled in his picks Thursday in defiance of the dark cloud that hangs over previous attempts at wealth.
“They say call the lottery hotline for help,” he said, “but they never give me the right numbers. I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. When I was born, the doctor smacked me.”
Jokes exhausted, he strode to the counter and produced another $2.
By the numbers
▪ $66 million: value of Mega Millions tickets sold in North Carolina since July.
▪ 138,387: number of tickets that won a prize in the last drawing on Jan. 19.
▪ $.76: amount of each $2 ticket that goes to N.C. education.
▪ $57 million: amount James Jones of Greenville won in 2011.
▪ 1 in 303 million: odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot.