The $20.1 Million Powerball Ticket Was Found — It Was a Bookmark

Updated 26 September 2026: the mystery is solved. The ticket has been found — and it really was a bookmark. This article now tells the whole story, from the July draw to the bookshelf reunion.

Back in August I wrote about a Powerball ticket that had won just over $20 million and then vanished. Lotto NZ was publicly asking West Aucklanders to check their wallets, gloveboxes and coat pockets. For weeks, nobody came forward.

The ending, when it finally arrived, was better than anything I would have guessed: the ticket had spent nearly two months inside a book, doing a job as a bookmark. Its owner is a West Auckland man who bought it, tucked it between the pages, forgot about it, and only rediscovered it when he picked the book back up after a break from reading.

The draw behind the story

The 25 July draw (Powerball #2606) carried a headline jackpot of $40 million — one of the biggest pools of 2026. The winning line was 1, 12, 14, 18, 22, 29, Bonus 32, Powerball 8. Two tickets matched all six numbers plus the Powerball, splitting the prize at just over $20.1 million each.

• One half: claimed by an Auckland couple, who said the win "felt like a dream" and planned to pay off their mortgage, buy a new car, and help animals.
• The other half: the ticket that went home to West Auckland and slipped into a book.

More than 57,000 tickets won something on that draw, but the second Division 1 winner stayed silent — for a while.

Two months on a bookshelf

The timeline, as Lotto NZ and the winner have told it:

• 25 July — the ticket is bought at Blockhouse Bay Post Shop & Stationers for the Saturday draw. Somewhere between the counter and home, it gets parked between the pages of a book.
• August — with the prize unclaimed for three weeks, Lotto NZ goes public and urges West Auckland Powerball players to check their tickets. The story makes the news; the ticket keeps holding someone's page.
• Late September — the man picks the book back up after time away from it, finds the ticket, and puts it "straight into my wallet ready to check the next time I went to the shop."
• The reveal — he scans it at the shop's self-check machine. The screen "flashed major prize", and the winning music does the rest.

He knew a big prize had been sold locally. He still didn't connect it to himself:

"I knew they had sold a big one — but you never think it's going to be you, do you? Even when I found the ticket, I didn't put two and two together."

His first thought was that it might be a few thousand dollars. It was $20.1 million.

"I think I was in shock. He was more excited than me."

That was about the machine operator, for the record.

What the win actually is

The prize breaks down as $20 million from Powerball First Division plus $111,111 from Lotto First Division — $20.1 million in total, for a $0.80-per-line add-on that nearly lived out its days as stationery.

The man wants to stay anonymous, hasn't told anyone yet, and plans to tell close family soon. His plans so far are refreshingly calm:

"I'm going to take things slow and really think about what to do with this money. I do want to go on an overseas trip, but that's the only plan so far."

If you're curious what a sensible version of that conversation looks like, I wrote one up: what a sensible Kiwi might do with a big win — pay off the practical stuff, look after your people, then maybe book the trip.

What Lotto NZ said

Will Hine, Lotto NZ's Head of Corporate Communications, had spent August gently nudging the mystery winner. On the news, he said:

"We're so pleased the lucky winner found his ticket and checked it before we started the next stage of our search. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to realise that his bookmark was worth $20.1 million."

The "next stage of our search" is a real thing — when a major prize stays unclaimed, Lotto NZ works from sales data to narrow down where and when the ticket was bought. This one never got that far. The bookshelf got there first.

The next ticket Lotto NZ is hunting

The story has a sequel, because Lotto NZ is now looking for the owner of another significant prize: a $333,333 ticket sold at Four Square St Heliers for the 27 June draw.

Hine's advice to anyone who might have shopped in St Heliers around then is the same spirit that solved the bookmark story — check, and maybe, as he put it, "have a scan of your bookshelf."

How long do you have?

Lotto prizes must be claimed within 12 months of the draw. After that, unclaimed prize money moves on — where unclaimed prizes actually go has its own story. The bookmark winner made it with about ten months to spare, which sounds comfortable until you remember he didn't know he had won.

A few habits that would have saved a lot of drama, all free:

• Write your name on the back of a retail ticket the moment you buy it.
• Check promptly — at a store, on MyLotto, or via the app's ticket scanner.
• If you use paper tickets, keep one familiar spot for them, and know what happens if a ticket is lost — retail tickets are bearer items, so a lost one is usually lost for good.

The honest reminder

The chance that a random old ticket is a winner is tiny. Under the new 14-ball Powerball format the Division 1 odds are 1 in 53.7 million — and the July draw itself was played under the older, friendlier 1-in-38.3-million odds. Checking, on the other hand, costs nothing and takes two minutes.

For perspective, here are the largest individual Lotto/Strike wins on record in New Zealand:

Every one of those winners knew within days. The bookmark winner just proves the database of "usual" is smaller than we think.

Meanwhile the current Powerball sits at $8 million for tonight's draw after Wednesday's rollover — and somewhere out there, a new batch of tickets is about to be bought, checked quickly, and hopefully never asked to hold a page.

If gambling has stopped being entertainment for you or someone close to you, Gambling Helpline NZ is free, confidential, and available 24/7 on 0800 654 655.