Gift of ‘lovely handbag’ nearly cost Cork woman €100k Lotto prize, when ticket was left in old bag

A CORK woman was in “disbelief ” when she discovered that the lottery ticket that she had left sitting in her old handbag for months was the winner of a €100,000 prize.

The woman, who bought the Christmas Millionaire Raffle ticket at Friars Road Post Office in Turners Cross, had not thought twice about it until she came across a news article that was published off the back of a nationwide unclaimed prize appeal. With just days remaining until the prize claim deadline on March 30, the woman identified that her ticket was a winning one and got to the National Lottery winners’ room in Dublin just in time to claim it.

“I don’t usually keep up with the news, so I had no idea that such a significant prize remained unclaimed in the area,” the woman, who preferred to stay anonymous, explained.

“It was like a bolt from the blue when I saw the article. Suddenly, I remembered buying a ticket for the draw, but I never imagined it could be the winning one. When I scanned the ticket on my phone and saw the message pop up confirming my win, I was in disbelief. I set the ticket and the phone aside out of pure shock, but after a few hours, I finally composed myself to check again to make sure I wasn’t dreaming,” she said.

Remarkably, the delighted Cork woman admitted that the winning ticket had been left in an old handbag since the draw after she received a new bag as a Christmas present.

“And to think the thing that could have cost me €100,000 was receiving a lovely new handbag for Christmas! I feel so blessed that I came across the CorkBeo news article when I did because I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I had found the ticket in a couple of months’ time, well after the prize claims deadline,” the woman said.

“I won’t dwell on what could have been because I now have a cheque for €100,000. We’ll be able to pay off what’s left of our mortgage and a couple of bills. As a family, we have agreed that we deserve to splurge on ourselves a little bit, so we’ll definitely be upgrading the car.”