The story of the selbees, a couple who made ~8m for themselves and their community from gaming a lottery, is a great read [0]
Jon Wertheim: You saved all the losing tickets?
Marge Selbee: Saved them in big totes.
Jerry Selbee: Big plastic totes.
Jon Wertheim: There must have been millions.
Jerry Selbee: 18.
Jon Wertheim: $18 million worth of losing tickets. And you have those?
Jerry Selbee: Uh-huh just in case we had a physical federal audit.
Marge Selbee: We had the upstairs of the barn. I stored them in one end and in the other end. And then I thought, "Oh no, this floor is gonna fall through." So then we stored them down in the pole barn. And we had probably 60, 65 tubs of tickets.
Why would they need to keep them? Did they buy them with cash or something? Wouldn't the credit/debit transaction be good enough to prove you bought it?
Jon Wertheim: You saved all the losing tickets?
Marge Selbee: Saved them in big totes.
Jerry Selbee: Big plastic totes.
Jon Wertheim: There must have been millions.
Jerry Selbee: 18.
Jon Wertheim: $18 million worth of losing tickets. And you have those?
Jerry Selbee: Uh-huh just in case we had a physical federal audit.
Marge Selbee: We had the upstairs of the barn. I stored them in one end and in the other end. And then I thought, "Oh no, this floor is gonna fall through." So then we stored them down in the pole barn. And we had probably 60, 65 tubs of tickets.
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jerry-and-marge-selbee-how-a-re...