North Carolina Man Uses Lottery Prize To Buy Another Winning Ticket

Winning the lottery once is long shot, but winning twice in a row? That's incredibly rare. A man in North Carolina beat those odds after he used his $50 prize from a lottery game to purchase another ticket, a move that brought him even more money.

Derek Smith, of Winston-Salem, recently bought a lottery ticket that won him a prize of $50. He was feeling lucky when cashing it in at his local Harris Teeter store, so he decided to buy another, a $5 "7" scratch-off ticket, according to UPI. It wasn't until later, while he was eating breakfast, that he scratched it, revealing the $200,000 prize.

"I hadn't revealed any amount of money yet," he recalled. "When I scratched it, it said '7.' And I revealed the money and was like, 'Woah, this is crazy!' My wife was vacuuming, and I said to her, 'Turn that thing off and don't cry.'"

"We were very excited," his wife said. "High-fiving, dancing. We really couldn't believe it. It's just an incredible blessing."

So since he used his previous winnings to buy another ticket, what does he plan to do with this bigger prize? Well, it doesn't involve another game.

"We're gonna put the bulk of it toward our mortgage," he said. "And the rest, we're just gonna have some fun with it. Give a little bit to our kids and grandkids."