Check those scratchers under the refrigerator magnet and in the center console of your car. The Iowa Lottery says 13 scratch games are coming to an end.
The Iowa Lottery’s announcement on Monday starts a ticking clock. Players have until the close of business on Sept. 19 to claim prizes.
Which Iowa Lottery scratch games are ending?
It’s common for the Iowa Lottery to freshen up the collection of scratch tickets on display at the state’s retail locations. The end of these games will create room for a new wave of scratchers.
- Colossal Crossword
- $300,000 Platinum Cash
- 7 7 7
- 9s In A Line Large
- 7 HD
- Whole Lotta $50s
- Whole Lotta $100s
- Triple Tripler!
- Lucky No. 13
- Double Double
- 4 Corners Holiday Crossword
- Holiday Wishes
- and Tic Tac Toe.
RELATED: Read our guide on how to claim your lottery winnings.
Unclaimed wins from Iowa Lottery scratch games go into future games
Mary Neubauer, the Iowa Lottery vice president for external relations, estimates about $1.5 million in lottery winnings go unclaimed in an average year.
Last year she told PlayIA:
“Many of those prizes are small — $3, $5 — but obviously they add up over time. For those really small prizes, I think maybe folks set them aside and mean to come in to claim them. Then — for whatever reason — they don’t get around to it. But it’s always interesting to me to see that number at the end of the year.”
The Iowa Lottery maintains an unclaimed prize page. The Clive staff will often put out reminders when they know the deadline to claim a larger prize is approaching.
Neubauer said:
“Every year here in Iowa we’ll see prizes at the $10,000 level, $50,000 level — maybe even something as high as $200,000 will expire without being claimed.”
That usually happens in the lotto games offered by the Iowa Lottery, but plenty of scratch-ticket wins go unclaimed as well:
“Perhaps they only check the ticket to see if they won the jackpot and they don’t check further — not knowing that there are really significant prizes in those games that aren’t the jackpot — but you also can win. In a scratch ticket, maybe they play the ticket, didn’t check it closely enough and didn’t realize they had won. Maybe the ticket gets lost. I think there could be as many reasons as there are people in this world.”
Large Iowa Lottery prizes will expire soon
Iowa’s lotto games have the biggest unclaimed jackpots — and the Iowa Lottery scratch games aren’t computer-generated at the store, so they don’t have a digital footprint. With that in mind, here are Iowa’s biggest unclaimed prizes. Players have one year to claim prizes so time is running out in a few cases.
- $390,000 — A Lucky For Life lotto ticket purchased Nov. 4, 2021, at the Edgewood Road Casey’s General Store in Cedar Rapids
- $50,000 — Powerball ticket purchased July 21, 2021, at the Nebraska Avenue Casey’s in Council Bluffs
- $50,000 — Powerball ticket purchased Oct. 23, 2021, at the Kum & Go convenience store in Stuart
- $20,000 — Lotto America ticket purchased June 18, 2022, at the Casey’s in Delmar
- $10,000 — Mega Millions ticket purchased May 6, 2022, at the Gas & Goodies in Libertyville
