A Maryland Couple Constantly Checked Which Top Prizes Were Remaining, Then Won $500,000 on a Lottery Scratch Off

Here is a lottery win earned partly with doing your homework. A Maryland couple from Dundalk took home $500,000 on a scratch-off, and they credit the husband's research for pointing them to the right ticket.

The wife told Maryland Lottery officials that she and her husband, who both work at a Maryland college and are nearing retirement, play together often.

"We play because we love it," she said. "It's something we can have fun with together. We once won $500. That was exciting."

The husband did his homework

When she headed to the store late last month, her husband asked her to buy two of one specific game. His reason is the whole point of this story.

"I'd been checking the remaining big prizes on the lottery website and Gifts of Green had a few top prizes still available," he said. "So that was the one."

They scratched the two tickets together at home. It took less than a minute.

"My eyes went back and forth between the dollar-sign symbol and the $500,000 beneath it and the game's rules," the wife said. "I could not believe what I was seeing." Her stillness caught her husband's attention. "When I looked in her eyes and heard the tremor in her voice, I knew it was something big," he said.

About the game

Gifts of Green is a $20 Maryland scratch-off that debuted in October 2025 with seven $500,000 top prizes. Two of those remain in circulation, along with two $25,000 second-tier prizes. The Walmart at 2399 North Point Boulevard in Dundalk sold the winning ticket, earning the store a $1,000 bonus.

Why checking prizes remaining actually works

The husband's move is one of the smartest things a scratch-off player can do, and it is the whole reason ScratchCheck exists. A game keeps selling long after its top prizes are gone, so buying one that still has its big prizes, as he did, genuinely puts you in a better spot than grabbing whatever is on the rack. Skipping that check is the single most common way people play scratch-offs wrong. We track how many top prizes are left in every game, in every state, so you do not have to hunt through official reports. Gifts of Green is a live example: our data shows two of its seven $500,000 top prizes still unclaimed, exactly the kind of game he was looking for. You can find games with their big prizes still in play on our most-unclaimed-top-prizes list, or browse the current games in your state on the Maryland page.

Here is where ScratchCheck goes one better than the lottery's own website. Checking which games still have their top prizes, the way the husband did, only tells you the big money is still out there. It does not tell you how good the rest of the game is. That is what our ValueScore™ does: it rolls prizes remaining together with the game's payout percentage, prize quality, and how often it pays into a single 0 to 100 score. Gifts of Green rates a solid 68.7, and a glance at our best ValueScore rankings would have shown him whether an even stronger $20 game was sitting right next to it. Same instinct, sharper tool.

As for the money, the couple plans to put it toward a new vehicle and their retirement.

"We've been trying to figure out how retirement was going to work for us. This takes away so many of the worries," the wife said.

Sources

UPI: Husband's research pays off with $500,000 lottery win

Maryland Lottery: Dundalk couple wins $500,000 scratching Gifts of Green ticket