Seth Elkin of The Maryland Lottery tells us the story of local man who nearly threw away a million dollar winning scratch-off ticket and more fun winners as summer promotions kick in for more fun and winner tales of cashing in.
Nestor Aparicio and Seth Elkin from the Maryland Lottery discussed various promotions and events. They highlighted the Back to the Future scratch-offs. Seth shared stories of recent winners, including a truck driver from Columbia who almost discarded a $200,000 winning ticket. They also talked about the Let’s Make a Deal promotion, where winners can win cash prizes and trips to Los Angeles. Additionally, they mentioned the Choose Your Own Vacation promotion, offering trips to Marco Island, New Orleans, or New York. Despite the Orioles’ current struggles, Seth remains optimistic about their future performance.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Maryland Lottery, Seth Elkin, Orioles, Home Run Riches, Scratch Offs, Second Chance Contests, Let’s Make a Deal, Ravens Scratch Off, Winners Stories, Technology, My Lottery Rewards, Choose Your Own Vacation, Baltimore 10 Miler, Capitol Jazz Fest, Beer and Barbecue Stroll.
SPEAKERS
8Seth Elkin, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:02
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 task Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. And I am certainly going to be getting the Maryland craft gate tour back out on the road. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs. We are going to be up in green mount station in beautiful Hampstead, right next to the OTB in a bowling alley got it all going on up there in Carroll County. That’ll be on the fifth, that is next Thursday, and then on the 13th, we’re back at fade leaves in Lexington market. We punted on our show from the 28th move to two weeks till times get better at Camden Yards. I’m at least hoping times already better, because I love having this guy on. He is a communicator of all things communications for the Maryland lottery. Usually John Martin is riding shotgun with me, the executive director, but he has left the reins here post Memorial Day and like we’re not even playing the pirates and the Raven, the Steelers aren’t playing each other, although there is a raven Steelers related lottery story, we welcome Seth Elkin back on my baseball. Kimo Sabe, you know, I like having you on and I liked it a lot more when the Orioles were good the last two years. Then I’m really enjoying it right now. I know we’re going to do home run riches and all that stuff, but you’re a lifelong baseball guy, even though you’re a struggling Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Have you ever seen anything like this with this Orioles. I mean, this has really been something to witness this over the last eight weeks, and just kind of shocking from a bit you feel like nothing can shock you in baseball, but this team being in last place is a little shocking. Well,
Seth Elkin 01:31
when you’re a pirates fan and you’re 53 years old and your team has only had 18 winning seasons in your lifetime, nothing really shocks you that much, I try to give the Orioles a little bit, a little bit of benefit of the doubt. I mean, look, this team’s been decimated by pitching injuries. You haven’t had Grayson Rodriguez, you haven’t had Kyle Bradish. You lost your best starting pitcher. It’s a free agency, which I think everybody knew was going to happen. You lost your best power hitter to free agency. So you know, it stands to reason that things were not going to be quite right with this team this year. I think, I mean, that’s the way you had to approach it coming into the year. But yeah, it’s a it’s been frustrating to watch. And you know, certainly we were, we’re hoping to see some home runs. We may get a chance here at the end of May, with with one of the weaker teams in baseball coming to town, looking at the schedule, and I’m when I see White Sox, I just
Nestor Aparicio 02:25
keep thinking, at some point they’re going to start hitting a lot of home runs, start hitting something other than one for 14, with runners in scoring position. At some point, there’s going to be some weavers, and I hope there’s more grand slams, because I’m hoping that John Martin has disappeared this week to go figure out the money for the Grand Slams that we’re not hitting right now, yeah,
8Seth Elkin 02:43
to find the $5,000 that we’re going to need every time a Grand Slam gets hit. So none. Nonetheless, in spite of all of this, the the home run Rich’s contestant of The Game promotion rolls on. All right,
Nestor Aparicio 02:54
I knew two of them in the month of May. How many am I going to know in June? What’s that names of the winners. Like, seriously, I saw siriopolis up there. I’m like, I know them. We you know, I even mispronounced their name. So it’s great.
Seth Elkin 03:08
Just drew the winners for the month of June, and you can find them on our website. But the thing I’m excited about is this last series in May, when the White Sox are in town because I think we might see some balls fly out of the ballpark. The White Sox are not very good. We
Nestor Aparicio 03:25
8need more hot air. We need, you know, not that I’ll help our pitching as well. But like, as long as at this point we’re last place, all I want them to do is run you folks at the Maryland lottery ragged with home run riches, and at least hit some solo home runs. Hit some cheapos when they’re down 10 runs in the eighth inning. Hit a couple. That’s all just let’s start giving some money away. Let’s cheer
Seth Elkin 03:48
for these three people who who are contestants of the game for that White Sox series. That’s what I got circled on. Let’s go. Let’s go. We get the May 30 game is, is Matthew Conlon from Laurel, and then you got Wayne Clark from Barton on May 31 and then the June 1 game against the White Sox is Matthew Harold from Perry Hall. He’s the first winner for June which we just drew. I probably
Nestor Aparicio 04:08
know Matt. Matthew Harold. Matt Harold, sure. I know. I have to know Matt, right? Perry Hall, I know. I know a lot of my kid went to the hall. Perry Hall, there
Seth Elkin 04:16
you go. So and we’ve got the rest of them posted. We get the Orioles will go out on the West Coast. After that, they’ll go to Seattle. And I’m about to say Oakland. It’s not Oakland anymore. It’s where are they playing Stockton Zach or somewhere? Yeah, I don’t know. I will never say Vegas A’s. I’m just not going to do it there. That green and gold, to me, is always going to be Oakland, but that’s where the Orioles are headed. And we’ll have some more chances for people to win Veronica mocha from Riverdale, John Morris from Windsor mill, and Mark Bain from habit of grace will have a chance in those first few days of June as the the Orioles go to Seattle for that series. So, so what was the town
8Nestor Aparicio 04:55
on the second guy, again, you gave me a town I didn’t know it was there was I. Barton. Wayne Clark from Barton Martin, Maryland. Well, I gotta look up where Barton Maryland is, just because I quicker than I will. I need to know. I there. Well, there’s a firehouse. Oh, my goodness, it is. It is, um, it’s in the area that’s been heavily damaged by the floods. It’s right by Western Port. It is, literally, you ready for this? It’s the next town down from Lona Conan. Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, that’s almost like a baseball community over there. We got the lefty Grove statue, right? I mean, people don’t know that the lefty Grove Memorial Park is in Lona Conan, so that town that you just gave me there, Barton, it’s just south of Moscow, or, I don’t know if they might maybe pronounce it Moscow. I’m not sure how they pronounce it, but it’s right above western port, which is where I did some fly fishing out on the Maryland crab cake tour two summers ago. Well,
Seth Elkin 05:47
we’re cheering for all of these people. Let’s, let’s especially cheer for for Wayne Clark, because, like you say that that area has been through a lot in these last couple of weeks. But let’s see if we can, we can bank some home runs out of the ballpark
Nestor Aparicio 05:59
against please, please flood. Flood the ballpark with home runs is what’s got. The floods we need. Seth Elkin is here. He is with the Maryland lottery, and we’re giving tickets away. We’re out. We’re doing scratch. Also, we’re doing all that stuff. But I want to get to winner stories here, because we haven’t hit enough home runs. We’ve talked about last place, we talked about the pirates. I want to get some winners stories. And I know you’re fond of yinz and that, and downtown and Pittsburgh, and you being a Maryland lottery representative for a long time, you take some special pride in this ravens competition when a Steelers fan wins and wins big. So I’m gonna give you the floor. This is probably why you’re here this week, because there’s been, there’s been, you know, a shift in the tectonic plates with the Maryland lottery and the Raven scratch off 10x right? Well,
Seth Elkin 06:45
8yeah, we the Ravens tickets from that were launched, you know, last summer, still out there for sale. Takes a while to sell through them. And we actually had two ravens times 10 winners of the $200,000 top prize on that ticket. And one of them, as you mentioned, was from Hagerstown. And you know, once you get out in that part of Maryland, it becomes Steelers territory, conflicted.
Nestor Aparicio 07:06
It really is good. You know, they also have the former mayor of Hagerstown who now works for the governor. She’s a specials Commissioner for opioid addiction in the state. She was a former mayor of Hagerstown, and she sends me poop texts when the commanders do well some so there’s a commander’s presence out there too. There is, I just want to say that they are the other team, the other state team,
Seth Elkin 07:33
for for the time being, until they move back to DC, which is on the horizon, by
Nestor Aparicio 07:39
the way. I went down to that stadium a couple weeks ago, and I parked right in the Planet Fitness lot. I saw AC DC. You know, it’s not the greatest stadium, but, like, I was happy to be there that night. So I and I don’t go off and you know that I don’t, I don’t make that burgundy, and I don’t do that burgundy and golfing, but, but we are a conflicted state. I mean, if you go up to you mentioned habit of grace, cross the bridge, go up to elk, and you’ll see Eden spans, and we see all that in Ocean City, but the Steelers thing sort of the original sin for me, even more so than Joe Gibbs or John Riggins, Western
8Seth Elkin 08:10
Western Maryland, you’re going to find some Steelers fans in there was one in agerstown that bought that ravens times 10 ticket anyway, and I’m pretty sure he’s glad he did, even though he’s a Steelers fan. I i personally would not want to be handling ravens tickets. I’m, I’m a Steelers fan. I try to keep it black and gold around here. But he picked up that ticket, and he was a $200,000 winner on the winning the top prize on that ticket. And then we had another one to balance it out. We had another one from Baltimore, who claimed last week as well. So, so you bounce, you balance it out. You get a you get a Steelers fan. We got Pittsburgh Steelers into a headline of one of our winter stories, which is always a a coup for me, when
Nestor Aparicio 08:50
we can do that, but enjoy it while you can. It’s the off season. You don’t have a board. We had a quarterback too.
Seth Elkin 08:55
So, you know, we balance it out. And I probably, you’re probably right, because I probably won’t have much to say about the Steelers and whoever they’re managed to be have playing at quarterback when the season begins later this year. So I’m enjoying it while I can. As you say,
Nestor Aparicio 09:11
8I haven’t won anything lately. So I want you to continue with, I mean, last place, we don’t play football for four months here, right? So there’s no I mean, even Caitlin Clark was supposed to come to Baltimore. To Baltimore this week, and she’s injured. So like I just I Marilyn lost to Cornell and lacrosse. I mean, we have not this has been poopy. Weather’s been awful. The only good thing that’s happened to me is a couple of concerts lately. I need more winners stories from you. So give me something, tell me something good here, because I saw a story on the website about somebody almost threw away a million dollar ticket. Is that true? Yeah, you know,
Seth Elkin 09:48
that’s the kind of thing you hear. And it almost sounds like a cliche, right? But this actually happened to somebody. There was a guy who’s a resident of Columbia, and he was, he’s a truck driver, and he was a. Stopped at the travel centers. I forget the name of the the the rest stop on i 95 in Elkton, and he stopped and bought a couple of things. Bought a couple of scratch off tickets, and one of them was a $20 monopoly times 100 scratch off that he scratched it off, and he didn’t think it was a winner, and temporarily, at least, he tossed it in the trash. No,
Nestor Aparicio 10:20
no, no, no, no, no. You gotta, you gotta download the app. Don’t do that. We’ll do that. It turns
Seth Elkin 10:26
out he, he must have done that, or he must have realized, hey, you know what? Let me take a quick he threw in the trash because he’s he grabbed it. He grabbed it back after he did that, and said, let me take a closer look. And he did exactly what you mentioned. He got the Maryland lottery app. He scanned it, and it said, Take ticket to lottery. And that is the message that you want to see. It’s my
8Nestor Aparicio 10:46
app right here, and right here is a little Scan button at the bottom, yep. And it’s all this technology. It’s amazing. I had a couple of guests this week struggle with getting on Zoom because they were a little older, figuring stuff out the technology available here to be able to scan tickets when, when I hand them out, people come up Cocos, wherever I am next week, I green mount station. Hey, did I win? Give me your ticket and and the fun part is, when you win here, you don’t just get the money, and it feels nice to win. You get balloons. You get you’re a winner. You know what? I mean? You get to feel like a real winner when you do now, I will say it’s the other thing. It’s almost at the Family Feud. You know, you hear the little buzzer when not a winning ticket. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t still win, because that’s what I’m going to let you talk about second chances too. Yeah. Well, the
Seth Elkin 11:35
really cool thing about the app, I think, is, is that it does tell you the exact dollar amount of what you’ve won. So on any winning ticket, when you scan it, it’s going to tell you, not only that, it’s a winner, it’s going to say, here’s how much. And it takes
Nestor Aparicio 11:47
this guy said 200 grand, and it say, no, no, you want you call it a lottery. Did it say that?
Seth Elkin 11:51
8It’s it says that you gotta, you gotta come to the lottery to claim the prize. But it does show you the winning amount. So you, when you scan that ticket, it’s going to tell you, it takes all the guesswork out of it. You can do that from wherever you are, download it to your phone. It’s available no matter what kind of phone you got, Android or or iPhone. And you can have that in the palm of your hand. You can be on your couch, you can be in your car, as as this guy probably was, or in his truck. And you can scan your ticket and find out what you’ve won immediately. But as you mentioned, if your ticket is not a winner. It’s can be entered into my lottery rewards, which is how we run all of these Second Chance contests that we have we got, actually, I was just looking this morning. I think we’ve got five different Second Chance promotions that are active right now. So any with the scratch off tickets is any non winning ticket can be entered to earn you some points at least, and certain tickets are attached to scratch or attached to Second Chance contest. Currently, we’ve got the Let’s Make a Deal ticket which you can win cash prizes, and five people are going to win a trip to Los Angeles. This
Nestor Aparicio 12:56
is good. We’ve been running the ads lately for Let’s Make a Deal and, and I’ll be honest with you, we talked about this. We back to the future. I know the series. Last year we did some Game of Thrones. Not my thing. Don’t, don’t even, let’s make a deal like, I like that show when I was a kid and Monty Hall and dressing up and all that. I can be honest with you and say I didn’t know the show was still like running. So this promotion gives you a chance. And we had local winners. John told me last week, we have people like, going out to LA, great trip. I mean, just a great trip in general. Maybe the Dodgers aren’t down when you go out whatever, but you go to the to the studio, and this is where, like, the let’s make a deal. Thing for anybody that knows, this is where you can, like, instead of getting these banana baseball ticket. Just dress up like a giant banana or a peach if you want be any kind of fruit you want to be. Be a tree, be whatever you want to be.
Seth Elkin 13:47
That’s going to be the fun part of this trip. I think it’s a really great prize. You’re going to spend a couple of days in Los Angeles. Part of the prize is a trip to a costume shop to pick out a costume to wear. I didn’t know this. Yeah, so it’s even better. Gonna be a lot of fun with the first trip winner has been selected. It was Wallace thrash from Clinton, which is in Prince, George’s County. And then we had four winners of $5,000 prizes in that first draw. Can
Nestor Aparicio 14:13
we, can I talk? Can I get Doug or something when they come back, like you guys, get me the Ravens winners? And they’re always great, and they’re heartwarming their fans, and I’ve had them all on. I like having doing all of that. Matter of fact, your winner from two years ago is a great guy that’s come on part of my charity thing, because he helps people. But like the people that dress up and go down, I gotta, I somebody’s got to come on with it, because these are going to be fun people, right? I mean, you buy the, let’s make a deal ticket, and you win the trip to California. Oh, come on, right?
8Seth Elkin 14:45
It’s an exciting prize. I’m looking forward to how that goes as well. It’s, it’s a cool
Nestor Aparicio 14:49
Juan Smith bringing cheesecake, but it’s pretty good. But it’s
Seth Elkin 14:53
still, it’s still pretty good. It’s actually a longer trip than winning the trip with the ravens, which is kind of quick, you because you
Nestor Aparicio 14:58
8and you can’t, well, you. Probably can lose. I mean, imagine you get picked, and you take door number three, and they get the donkey or whatever. You know, it’s, I hope that, but they’ve already won. They get cash. They get a whole bunch of stuff, yeah, and
Seth Elkin 15:09
they’re winning a trip to Los Angeles. So, you know, it’s a great experience. And these are the kinds of things that we we have going on on on a regular basis through my lottery rewards. I mean, there’s no point in the year where we don’t have some Second Chance promotion running. So there’s always something if you don’t see something you like and come back in a couple of weeks, we might have something new. We also have points for drawings contests. And speaking of trips, there’s a number of points for drawings opportunities that are coming up. And let me get back to that page, and I’ll tell you about it. There’s a choose your own vacation trip. So part
Nestor Aparicio 15:44
of what you you can earn, bucket list thing there. Okay, part of
Seth Elkin 15:48
what you can earn when you enter tickets into my lottery rewards, if they’re not specifically connect, even if they are connected with a second chance contest, they’ll also help you make progress toward earning points. And you can use some of your points to enter other types of drawings that we have as part of the rewards program. And one of them that’s going on now, I believe, through July 1, is choose your own vacation. So the winners of this will have the choice of a trip to macro Island Resort, or a trip to New Orleans or a trip to I’m looking for the third location.
8Nestor Aparicio 16:26
Finally, I went through this city.
Seth Elkin 16:28
It’s new I’m going to Marco Islands, where New Orleans, New York or Marco Island, those are the three choices. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 16:33
I’ve been to New York. I’ve been in New Orleans. They’re great a Super Bowl in New Orleans, or something food New Orleans, right? But I’m going to go tomorrow. I need a beach. I mean, have you looked out the window here? Your tan is lacking right now, Stephanie beach. We’re going to always
Seth Elkin 16:49
8go island. It seems to be, yeah, we’re having a we’re having a pretty foul may here. But, yeah, it’s a cool opportunity. So that’s another thing you can do with with the points that you earn just from entering tickets that you’ve already purchased. So there’s no cost to participate in the rewards program. The only cost to you is what you’ve already paid for your lottery tickets. You can enter them in and and have a chance to win. There are all kinds of ways to enjoy rewards membership. So that’s something that’s that’s cool, and we love that choose your own vacation, because it gives people a nice choice and some really nice options too. I think I would pick New Orleans. I’ve never been there before, so I gotta
Nestor Aparicio 17:24
get to New York again too. It’s too easy. It’s right up the street. I gotta get back. Get some good pizza. Do that. Seth alkin is here. He’s making me hungry. He’s making me thirsty. For winnings. We’re gonna be doing the Maryland lottery crab cake tour. We’re gonna be doing that on the fifth of June. We’re back out at Greenmount station in Hampstead. I will have the Back to the Future scratch offs. You can win 10 grand at nobody’s ever won 10 grand in my presence, but I have had, over the course of the five years, I’ve had two $100 winners in several $50 winners. And people go crazy when I when I do give these winners out, we’re gonna be fade leaves on the 13th as well. Where are you guys going to be you spin wheels, you do stuff. There’s all sorts of things happening. You’re always out on weekends, and we’re always this time of year, lots of festivals. And I hope the weather gets better. I mean, I was bummed out for our friends at brew at the zoo last week that we didn’t get at least into the 70s by the end of the day on Sunday. But better days are ahead, and I know you guys are on the street all the time, but games and everywhere. We were
Seth Elkin 18:23
at ruin the zoo. We had a nice day there Saturday, and a real nice day the weekend before that, wine in the woods. The weather was great. But yeah, we’re going to be in early June. We’ll be at Druid Hill Park for the Baltimore 10 miler on June 7, and that same weekend, June 7 and eighth will be at the Capitol Jazz Fest in Columbia, and you can find us at the beer and barbecue stroll in Westminster on June 14. So lots of lots more. I
Nestor Aparicio 18:47
like all of that. I like jazz. I like beer. I like barbecue especially. I like turtle Park. I even know how to pronounce it. He is Seth Elkin. He’s with the Maryland lottery. He communicates, you know, on the baseball side. Can we just, can we talk a little baseball before we go here? Like,
8Seth Elkin 19:05
if we must, the pirates, such as they are, if that’s where you’re headed, I don’t
Nestor Aparicio 19:09
know. No, I know. I mean, the Orioles, and just in general, how much of a bummer it is when your team’s no good. This time of year, you know, like, I just Luke, and I get it after it every morning. And, I mean, the thing for me is seeing Jackson holiday play well, seeing Ryan O’Hearn, when your teams thinks all you got are, like a couple of good players, and you’re like monitoring and saying, please get Westbrook back. Please get cows are back. Please win. That’s all. We fired our manager since the, Oh, that’s right, you fired your manager too, right?
Seth Elkin 19:38
Yeah, it’s it is frustrating, particularly after such, you know, two great seasons at them, you win 101 games a couple of years ago. And yeah, the expectations are so high. And, you know, I you try to remember what you got to you get a beautiful ballpark. Here you get, in spite of what the weather has been here for much of May, you’ve got warm weather and sunny skies. On the way, and a great opportunity to go out and enjoy the Orioles of the ballpark. But it’s you have to figure there’s too much talent on this team for them not to bounce back. And they will figure out a way. They’ll get some of their pictures healthy, and they’ll start to turn things around a little bit.
Nestor Aparicio 20:15
8The pirates not so I need some here. I do. I’m glad that you just that a Pittsburgh fan could be the eternal optimist for me here, that’s good.
Seth Elkin 20:24
Well, we have nothing left but optimism with with the pirates, there’s nowhere to go but up. So we’re used to talking that way.
Nestor Aparicio 20:30
Imma say something nice by Pittsburgh, my son and his wife spent last weekend in Pittsburgh. They went up to the Warhol Museum and they walked around, and the weather was nicer there than it was here, apparently. And they love Pittsburgh. They’re like, it’s got, like, all the great things Baltimore has, the water, the walkway, things to do, things to see, places to eat. That’s all. They did not do the Duquesne, Duke, Kane incline, you’ve done that one
Seth Elkin 20:56
absolutely every Pittsburgh has done that several times.
Nestor Aparicio 21:01
For sure. I’ve only done it once. I did it with Coach Tomlin in 2015 and that was, it was quite a ride. It’s the whole ride was filmed on the internet. There’s your homework. You can go watch that if you want. Seth Falcon is here. He communicates for the Maryland lottery. Talks a little baseball with me, usually when things are better for the Orioles and always offer for the pirates. It’s a lot more fun for me, except when he brings up Omar Moreno or, you know, we are family or Sister Sledge. Please play responsibly. I tell everybody to do that all the time. When it comes to gambling, I was out in Vegas last week. Take it easy out there. Slow your roll. Know what you’re doing when you’re getting involved. There’s a lot of come ons everywhere. And we always appreciate if you had people in your life. Get them to help that they need one 800 gamblers always there. We talk about all of that. In the meantime, if you want to have some fun, come out and join me at cremount Station Hampstead next week, I will give you the Back to the Future scratch offs. And I’m we’re close to getting Raven season together here, right? Like soon, right? This is what happens when the Orioles stick, because I got to think about football season. So maybe my next batch of Scratch also be ravens, because August is right around the corner and training camp is coming. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
