$1m winning scratchie sold in Dannevirke

Dannevirke Four Square owner Mike Neilson is delighted his store sold a $1 million winning Scratchie. Photo / Sue Emeny

Dannevirke Four Square is celebrating its first big lottery win after selling a $1 million winning Scratchie.

Store owner Mike Neilson was thrilled with the win, as were his staff.

In the 16 months Neilson had owned the store, this was its first big win.

"Prior to this the biggest win we had was a second division Lotto win of $12,000. This win by far and away exceeds that," he said.

The store received notification on Thursday last week that it had sold a $1m ticket.

"We don't know who won and that's probably a good thing, but we do hope it was someone local. With the ticket being sold on a Thursday, we think that it was more than likely to have been a local person."

Neilson said his staff were really excited about the win.

"I think this is great for the town. It's very rare that you get these big results in the small towns. A lot of the big prizes tend to go to Auckland."

As the store's win has become known Neilson said he had seen a definite increase in sales of Scratchies.

Neilson said that last weekend he rang his brother-in-law, who owns a Pak'nSave store in Auckland, to gloat about the win only for this brother-in-law to ring him back yesterday to say his Auckland store had sold a million dollar winning Lotto ticket on Wednesday.

The winning ticket was a Cash Extravaganza that sells for $15. Of the three $1m prizes available two have now been won.

A total of 2,000,001 tickets have been issued with a total prize pool of $21m.