An Ohio teen bought his first lottery ticket minutes after turning 18 and won $10,000
Austin of Lewis Center, Ohio turned 18 on August 6, and marked it by driving to a gas station just after midnight with a friend to buy the first lottery ticket he was legally allowed to own. He picked the first $20 ticket that caught his eye, "sort of as a joke," and won $10,000.
Austin had tried to buy a different ticket first and had not put enough money in the machine. The friend, a year older and therefore a veteran, supplied the line of the night: "This is not how adult life goes!"
The ticket was a $300 Million Diamond Dazzler bought at Sheetz #725 on Polaris Parkway in Columbus. Austin, a future firefighter and MMA fighter, says the money arrived at a useful moment, because his 2004 truck with more than 300,000 miles on it has started making noises. He plans to replace it.
The ticket he happened to grab
Picking the first thing that caught his eye worked out better than it usually does. $300 Million Diamond Dazzler rates 79.8 on our ValueScore™, which makes it the third-best of Ohio's active $20 games behind Spectacular Riches at 88.6. $300 Million Diamond Dazzler returns 75.1% of sales as prizes and its overall odds are 1 in 3.33.
The game went on sale April 15, 2025 and has 38.6% sold of the printed tickets, so the prize table is still deep. His own tier, the $10,000 prizes, was printed 400 times and 246 of those are still unclaimed. Below that sit 8,630 prizes of $1,000 and 62,497 of $500.
The advertised top prize of $2 million pays as $80,000 a year for 25 years rather than as a single check, and five of the ten prizes remain. The cash option on the top prize pays around half.
Ohio players have had a good run on this game. Its ten $2 million top prizes have gone at almost exactly the rate the print run predicts, five claimed against 38.6% of tickets sold, which is the pattern a game follows when nothing unusual is happening. Buyers looking at it now are getting close to the same deal Austin got.
Current scores for every Ohio game are on our Ohio ValueScore™ rankings.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How old do you have to be to buy a lottery ticket in Ohio?
Eighteen. Austin of Lewis Center bought his first ticket just after midnight on the day he turned 18, August 6, 2026, at a Sheetz on Polaris Parkway in Columbus, and won $10,000. Most states set the age at 18, though Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana and Mississippi require 21 and Nebraska requires 19.
Why was 26.75% withheld from the prize?
That is 24% federal withholding plus Ohio’s 2.75% state rate, which took $2,675 from the $10,000 prize and left $7,325. Withholding is not the same as the final tax bill. On a prize this size a young winner with modest other income will often owe less than was withheld and get some of it back at tax time.
What is the top prize on $300 Million Diamond Dazzler?
It is advertised as $2 million, but it pays as an annuity of $80,000 a year for 25 years rather than a single payment. Five of the ten top prizes were unclaimed as of this writing. The $20 game rates 79.8 on our ValueScore™ with a 75.1% payout percentage and overall odds of 1 in 3.33.
Jessie Jurado is a news writer who covers new scratch-off launches, state lottery guides, taxes on winnings, news, and much more. She joined ScratchCheck in 2026 and writes the site's state-by-state coverage.
