One Ontario man was just not satisfied with his $5 win on a scratch card. Some would spend it on a snack and move on with their lives, but Alan Webber of Wasaga Beach decided to use those winnings on just one more swing for the fences.
As luck would have it, that $5 instantly turned into a top prize of $100,000.
The 64-year-old power engineer had just won back the $5 cost of a BINGO ticket, using that small sum to buy another ticket from Mosley Mart on Mosley Street in Wasaga Beach in a move that would ultimately increase his winnings by 20,000 times.
Webber, a father and grandfather, says, “I was scratching my ticket at home and thought I won $50,000, but then I saw the ‘doubler’ in the corner and wasn’t sure how that worked,” while collecting his winnings at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) Prize Centre in Toronto.
“Sure enough, I scanned my ticket using the OLG App and saw $100,000! I thought it was great!”
Upon realizing what had just happened, Webber called over his wife to share the news, explaining, “She couldn’t believe it – she was so excited, she stopped what she was doing and said, ‘No way!'”
Webber says his trade-up can now be put to good use, like retirement and supporting his kids and grandkids.
“Winning this feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he concluded.
It’s similar to the story of Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who, between 2005 and 2006, traded his way from a practically worthless red paperclip all the way up to a house through fourteen increasingly valuable online trades.
A comparable Toronto-based story saw a trade-savvy local upgrade from a tiny hanger to a valuable painting.
Webber only had to trade up once, taking a chance by spending his meagre winnings on what proved to be an even bigger winner.
Statistically speaking, his odds of increasing his winnings were astronomically low, but Webber took a shot and lucked out big.
The game in question comes with a 1 in 3.75 chance of winning any prize, but a $50k haul with a doubler to $100k comes in at some very unpromising odds of 1 in 1,142,400.
