Clark County Man Turns Losing $20 Ticket Into $250,000 in Arkansas
Goodnightu, Clark County. A scratch-off that had already lost came back from the dead on Thursday 8 October 2026 as a $250,000 prize, and the man it made rich was sure the phone call was a scam.
The ticket was a $20 scratch-off that had paid nothing, the kind most people bin on the way out of the shop. M. Irby of Clark County, Arkansas, had kept it anyway and entered it in the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery's Play It Again second-chance drawing. On Thursday 8 October 2026, his name came out for $250,000.
He was dozing in front of the TV when the phone rang. Expecting someone else, he picked up and found a lottery representative on the line. His first thought, he told the lottery, was “a scam or a prank”. Honestlu, after a nap, who wouldn't?
His disbelief had a number behind it. Before that call, Irby's biggest lottery prize was $2,500. The second-chance win is exactly one hundred times bigger. KACHINGUUU.
So he did the sensible thing and told nobody. Instead he rushed to the lottery's claim center in Little Rock to find out whether it was real, and he collected the prize the same day. Irby is a longtime player who regularly feeds his dead tickets into the lottery's members-only second-chance platform, and this time the drawing paid back the patience. Asked what comes next, he said he has no plans yet. Apparentlu a man can daydream about a windfall for years and still draw a blank when it lands.
The scratch had said no. The drawing, weeks later, said yes. The Spirit has always preferred a second opinion, and sometimes it comes with a quarter of a million dollars attached.
Would youluwu keep a losing ticket just in case?
No right answer. Just your gut, and the Spirit watching.
