Powerball Jackpot Increases to $173 Million; Virginia Ticket Sales Projected to Double

Eddie Lopez believes one of the four Powerball tickets he bought Monday afternoon at a Falls Church will make his family millionaires.

Lopez, of Falls Church, said he buys two to four Powerball tickets a week in hopes of hitting it big so he can leave his job at an auto repair shop. He said if he wins the jackpot, he plans to spend a year vacationing around the world with a long stay in his native El Salvador.

“After a year of vacationing, I would come back and open my own auto repair shop,” Lopez said. “Then, I wouldn’t have to work as hard and I can have people working for me. I’ll pray over these tickets and see what happens.”

The concept is simple. Lopez picks five black numbers and one red number. He pays a dollar. And just like millions of other cock-eyed optimists, he walks away dreaming about how difficult it will be to spend millions and millions of dollars every year for the rest of his life.

Hundreds of thousands of Powerball lottery tickets will be sold across Virginia and millions more around the U.S. this week in advance of Wednesday night’s drawing. The current jackpot for the multi-state lottery is estimated at $173 million.

John Hagerty, a spokesman for the Virginia Lottery, said the average $20 million Powerball jackpot will generate about $524,000 in state sales. Virginia lottery vendors are expected to sell more than $1 million in Powerball tickets before Wednesday's drawing.

And as the jackpot gets higher, people buy more tickets, says Chuck Strutt, the executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, an organization that facilitates lotteries in many states including Virginia. When a jackpot exceeds certain benchmarks like $100 million and $200 million, people who don’t regularly buy tickets start to pony up the money, too.

But there isn’t any evidence to suggest more people buy tickets in a sluggish economy, Strutt said.

“The old wisdom is that lotteries pay no attention to the economy. Some states are slightly down; other states are slightly up,” Strutt said. “Good times or bad, people pay about the same. The price is so low, it’s just a $1. It’s virtually free at that point.”

The winning numbers will be announced Wednesday night. For more information about the game and the official rules, visit the Powerball website.