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The tickets that expire
Hundreds of millions of pounds and dollars in prizes go unclaimed every year, on deadlines nobody read.
Every lottery has a claim window — typically between 90 days and a year. When it passes, the prize is gone, and in most systems it goes to the state or to the good causes fund rather than back into the pot.
The famous ones are the big ones. A £63.8 million EuroMillions prize went unclaimed in the UK in 2012 despite a national appeal. A $77 million Powerball ticket sold in Georgia expired in 2011. Both were bought, both were winners, and neither was ever presented.
The lesson is unglamorous and absolute: if you buy tickets at all, check them, and know the deadline. It is printed on the back.
The reason so many go unclaimed is mundane: most are not jackpots. A ticket worth a few hundred pounds in a coat pocket is the commonest expired prize by a wide margin, because nobody frames a modest win as urgent. Lotteries publish the unclaimed totals every year, and they are consistently enormous.