Lotto winners have been sharing their winning thoughts with New Zealanders in 2016.
2016 has seen Northlanders gain new insight into the joy that Lotto winners experience.
Winners have the opportunity to speak anonymously to Lotto. They can say no, but many take up the opportunity to share their joy with the public.
Northland has experienced a lot of Lotto joy in 2016.
Since August alone, there have been 31 major prizes worth $14.6 million in first and second division prizes.
The latest was a $200,000 Lotto First Division winner last Saturday in Kaikohe.
The notion that the money will go to someone who could really do with it is heart-warming, although anyone who wins $200,000 is likely to find good reason to argue that, "yes, thank you, I could really do with this".
The latest winner to speak publicly about his win is a $5.3m winner from Wellsford.
He checked his ticket at his local shop, and was asked to accompany the shop worker to a back room.
He thought he might be in trouble but he was soon having other thoughts after being told he had won $5.3m.
We have more from that winner in tomorrow's Northern Advocate. It is a peek into a winner's world that few of us experience in person.
It's also difficult to resist like "car-crash TV" but it's happy.
You can't resist reading the winner's comments.
Probably because winning Lotto is an almost unachievable fantasy, and when someone else achieves it, we want to share it, even if there is no financial gain we can marvel in the wow factor of what it must be like to win big.
I am an occasional Lotto player.
This past week during a pre-Christmas cleanout, I found a Power Dip sitting in my office draw.
It is dated October 21, 2015.
The jackpot must have been huge that week for me to buy a ticket. I never checked it and on the back it says "prizes must be claimed within 12 months of the date of the draw".
The ticket is invalid.
I could check the numbers but what could be worse than discovering an out-of-date Lotto ticket was worth thousands of dollars, possibly millions?
Although the resulting story in the paper would certainly be a special type of insight into the unique thoughts of a Lotto player.
The worker logged 437 hours in five weeks - all of which was unpaid.