Lottery winner thought he won $25 — then he saw zeroes and ‘got the magnifying glass’

A husband and wife bought a handful of Iowa lottery tickets and waited until they were back home to scratch them.

The stack included a $20 Lucky 7 Bonus scratch game ticket, according to an Oct. 31 news release from the Iowa Lottery.

As Eric Guetter began scratching the ticket, he thought he won a $25 prize, officials said. Then the 50-year-old Worthington noticed some zeroes.

“I got the magnifying glass out to look a little closer, then I looked at my wife and was like, ‘Babe, we won a quarter-million dollars!’” Guetter told lottery officials.

He and his wife, Deanne, had won the game’s top prize of $250,000, according to the release. But Guetter wasn’t sure if he could believe it yet.

The couple took their ticket back to Morning Star Station, where they had bought it, and asked an employee to double check it, according to the release. The worker verified the big win with the store’s lottery terminal.

“It’s disbelief at first until I made sure my eyes weren’t lying to me,” Guetter told lottery officials. “And then it was like a great weight lifted off me because we can actually pay off our house now. Wow, it just feels great.”

Guetter said he plays lottery games for fun — and with the hope of winning big — but he didn’t think he would ever win a prize like this one.

“I always thought it would be nice, but when it actually happened, I just couldn’t believe it,” he told lottery officials.

Worthington, in Dubuque County, is about 60 miles northeast of Cedar Rapids.

This story was originally published October 31, 2023 at 4:07 PM with the headline "Lottery winner thought he won $25 — then he saw zeroes and ‘got the magnifying glass’."