Lottery player's forgotten, unscratched ticket wins a new truck, months later

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (TND) — A man in Nebraska won a truck from his state's lottery, but he almost didn't get a chance to collect.

Lucas Swarthout bought his winning Truck$ & Buck$ scratch-off ticket at a convenience store in North Platte, last fall.

Then, he “put it in his glove box and then promptly forgot about it,” lottery officials said. “That’s where it stayed until February when he found it by coincidence.”

“I was cleaning out my glove box,” Swarthout said. “I was looking for a VIN number on my other vehicle and found the ticket in there, unscratched.”

Swarthout added, he doesn’t play Truck$ & Buck$ very often, but he spent $2 that day anyway.

He also said he wasn’t too sure if he’d be keeping the new truck — a 2023 Ford F-150 XLT 4x4 Crew Cab Flex Fuel — until he found out the lottery would be taking care of the taxes and registration.

“That just makes it better,” he said.