Lucky Penny Leads To Massive Lottery Win For North Carolina Man

As the age-old saying goes, find a penny, pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck. For one man in North Carolina, this idiom proved to be true when the lucky coin he saw laying on the ground ended up helping him win a massive lottery prize.

"I guess it was fate," said John Grant, of Bolivia.

The 59-year-old Brunswick County man stopped by the May Way Corner Stop on Sunset Harbor to fill up his gas tank when he noticed a penny sitting on the ground beside his truck. While at the store, he had purchased a Fabulous Fortune ticket so he used his newfound penny to scratch off the ticket while watching fishermen by the Intracoastal Waterway, according to a release from the NC Education Lottery. When he scratched the ticket, he found out he won the $100,000 prize.

"My heart started beating real fast," he recalled. "I wasn't sure what I was seeing."

Grant claimed his prize at lottery headquarters on Tuesday (August 30), bringing home a grand total of $71,019 after required state and federal tax withholdings. When asked what he plans to do with his new winnings, he told lottery officials he hopes to buy a new Chevrolet Silverado truck but put away most of the prize in savings for the future.