A Michigan man followed a "whim" and used some of his $300 in lottery winnings to buy another Fast Play ticket -- scoring a $714,891 progressive jackpot prize.

"I had to check it five or six times to make sure," the winner told the N.C. Education Lottery in an Aug. 19 news release. Pearce is a caretaker for his mom, and she was the first to know about his big prize. "She was tickled," said Pearce, who lives in Zebulon, a roughly 20-mile drive east from downtown Raleigh.

A Michigan man turned some small winnings into a big pay day after trying his luck on some lottery scratch-off tickets.

A Maryland man took inspiration from another vehicle's license plate and bought a Maryland Lottery Pick 5 lottery ticket that earned him a $200,000 prize.

Recently, as he was stuck at a red light on his way to work, something caught his eye — a “chance sighting” that led to a big lottery prize, Maryland Lottery officials said in an Aug. 18 news release. “I noticed the tag on a truck, 19363,” the player told lottery officials. The numbers stuck with him.

Ruggiero won $435,915 after stopping at a Harris Teeter grocery store in Greensboro. While there, he tried his luck on the Carolina Cash 5 game, lottery officials wrote in an Aug. 20 news release. It turns out, the man’s $1 ticket held a big surprise. It beat 1-in-962,598 odds to match all the numbers picked in the Aug. 13 drawing.

The man said he was driving to work one day when an interesting set of numbers caught his eye. Little did he know, those numbers would lead him to a $200,000 lottery win.