Time Running Out on $100K Powerball Ticket Sold at Myrtle Beach 7-Eleven

Posted Thursday, November 12, 2026 11:06 am

David Hucks (via MyrtleBeachSC)

Nov 12, 2026 · @David https://x.com/myrtlebeachnews

A $100,000 question with a one-week deadline regarding the $100K Powerball Ticket Sold

Somewhere there’s a slip of paper worth $100,000. It could be in a wallet, a glove box or a kitchen drawer, and whoever owns it has seven days to find it. On Thursday, South Carolina Education Lottery officials said a Powerball ticket sold in May at the 7-Eleven at 1000 79th Ave. N. in Myrtle Beach has never been cashed. It expires Nov. 19.

The ticket was bought for the Saturday, May 23 drawing. It matched four of the five white balls plus the red Powerball. The buyer also paid extra for Power Play, which doubled a $50,000 prize to $100,000, according to lottery officials.

The urgency surrounding the $100K Powerball Ticket Sold raises questions about the winner’s next steps.

Most coverage of a story like this stops at “check your tickets.” That advice is worth repeating, but Horry County readers deserve more. Why would a six-figure winner sit unclaimed for almost six months? What exactly does the holder have to do in the next week? And if nobody comes forward, where does $100,000 in prize money end up? This story takes up each question in turn, starting with the drawing itself.

What happened on May 23

The winning numbers were 4, 16, 41, 48 and 66, with a Powerball of 26. Lottery officials announced on Tuesday, May 26, that the $100,000 ticket had been sold at the north Myrtle Beach 7-Eleven. Several local outlets carried the news that week.

The odds of that win help explain why it matters. The lottery puts the chance of matching four white balls and the Powerball at 1 in 913,129. Power Play then multiplies the prize. On that night the multiplier came up 2X, so the base $50,000 prize doubled.

This ticket wasn’t the only notable winner from that drawing. At the time, officials said more than 6,000 South Carolina players held winning tickets worth anywhere from $4 to $100,000. Most of those were small prizes that a store clerk can pay out at the counter. The 7-Eleven ticket was at the very top of that range.

A comparison from the same month shows how these stories usually go. A Horry County man won $100,000 on a Quick Pick bought at Money Savers Liquors on Broad Street in Loris for the May 13 drawing. He also had Power Play, and he claimed his prize and told officials he planned to spend it [LotteryUSA, 2026]. So two Horry County tickets hit the same $100,000 prize tier within ten days of each other. One winner has been paid. The other may not even know they won.

That contrast raises the obvious question of how a winner this large could go missing for six months.

Why a winning ticket can sit in a drawer for six months

Lottery officials haven’t said anything about who bought the ticket, and nothing here should be read as a claim about who did. The calendar still offers a plausible explanation. May 23, 2026 was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, when the Grand Strand fills with visitors for the unofficial start of summer. A ticket bought on a beach-week convenience run can easily go home in a suitcase and get forgotten.

Locals have their own reasons to miss a winner. Plenty of players buy a ticket when the jackpot gets big, never check the smaller prize tiers, and toss the slip in a cup holder. Ticket-checking stories from around the state show how often this happens. In October, officials made the same last-week appeal for a $50,000 Powerball ticket sold in Manning. In earlier years they issued similar warnings for unclaimed Powerball prizes, including three that expired on the same September day [Spectrum News, 2024].

There’s a bigger risk than forgetting. South Carolina treats lottery tickets as bearer instruments, which means whoever physically holds the ticket can claim the prize. A lost ticket generally can’t be replaced [Powerball.net, n.d.]. A Myrtle Beach story from this spring shows how easily tickets get separated from their owners. According to the lottery, a customer found a $500 winning Pick 3 ticket on the floor of a Myrtle Beach gas station and turned it in rather than keep it [KOLD/Gray News, 2026].

The takeaway for readers is simple. If you bought a Powerball ticket in that part of Myrtle Beach over Memorial Day weekend, or know someone who visited and played, it’s worth a look. Any lottery retailer’s terminal can scan a ticket and confirm whether it won [Lottery Valley, n.d.]. If it turns out you’re holding the winner, here is what comes next.

How to claim before the deadline

The deadline works the same whether you show up or mail it in. In person, the ticket must be presented at the lottery’s Columbia Claims Center before 4 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 19. By mail, the envelope must be postmarked no later than Nov. 19. That date is exactly 180 days after the drawing, which is the claim window South Carolina allows for draw games [FindLaw, n.d.].

The size of this prize matters for one practical reason. South Carolina lets winners claim prizes of up to $100,000 by mail. Anything larger has to be claimed in person in Columbia [Lottery.net, n.d.; BettingUSA, n.d.]. At exactly $100,000, this ticket qualifies for the mail option, so the winner doesn’t have to make the long drive inland.

A mailed claim for any prize over $500 needs three things: the signed original ticket, a completed claim form and a copy of a government-issued photo ID. The lottery’s mailing address is P.O. Box 11039, Columbia, SC 29211-1039 [BettingUSA, n.d.]. Here’s our advice, not the lottery’s. Sign the back of the ticket right away and photograph both sides. Then send it by a tracked service that gives you a dated postmark receipt. Because of the bearer rule, a ticket lost in the mail is a lost prize.

Winners should also expect less than $100,000 to arrive. Federal law requires 24% withholding on prizes over $5,000, and the state withholds income tax as well [LotteryUSA, n.d.]. Published estimates of South Carolina’s withholding rate range from about 6% to 7%, so check the current figure with the lottery. For a sense of scale, a Chapel Hill man who won the same $100,000 Powerball prize in May took home $72,011 after federal and North Carolina withholding. State law also says prizes over $500 can be subject to garnishment, such as for debts owed under a court order [FindLaw, n.d.].

If no one completes those steps by Nov. 19, the money doesn’t disappear. It changes hands.

If nobody claims it: where the $100,000 goes

If the ticket isn’t claimed, officials say the full $100,000 will be deposited in the state’s Education Lottery Account to support educational programs. That’s not just a lottery policy. State law requires unclaimed prize money to go into that account each year and directs the General Assembly to decide how a portion of it is spent through the budget [S.C. Code § 59-150-230, 2023].

That makes unclaimed prizes public money, appropriated by legislators. It also makes them bigger than most players realize. A budget table from the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office shows annual unclaimed-prize totals ranging from about $6.7 million to more than $22 million in the years it covers. Part of that money has been set aside for gambling-disorder programs [S.C. Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office, n.d.]. Seen that way, a single $100,000 ticket is small change in a multimillion-dollar stream that flows from Grand Strand counters to Columbia every year.

The stream has drawn scrutiny before. In a 2014 review, the Legislative Audit Council reported that the lottery transferred about $331 million to the Education Lottery Account in fiscal 2013-14. Auditors also found that the lottery estimated unclaimed prizes from historical trends without any set formula, and recommended it add other methods [S.C. Legislative Audit Council, 2014]. That review is more than a decade old. Whether the lottery has since adopted a stronger method is a fair question for anyone who follows how this money is budgeted.

For the person holding the ticket, though, the only number that matters right now is seven days.

What’s next

The clock runs out at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 19, for an in-person claim, and at the end of that day’s postmark for a mailed one. After that, the lottery is expected to confirm whether the prize was paid or moved into the Education Lottery Account. Winners aren’t required to come forward publicly, so a claim could happen without the buyer ever being named.

For readers, here’s a short checklist for the next few days:

Look. Check wallets, glove boxes, cup holders, junk drawers and the pockets of anything you wore over Memorial Day weekend.
Scan. Take any Powerball ticket dated for the May 23 drawing to a lottery retailer and have it checked. Don’t rely on reading the numbers yourself.
Spread the word. If friends or family visited Myrtle Beach that weekend, send them this story. The ticket may well be outside Horry County.
Act early. Don’t wait until Nov. 19 to mail a claim. Give yourself room in case the paperwork needs fixing.

We’ll report the outcome once the lottery announces it. If you have a tip about this ticket, or about how unclaimed lottery money is being spent in the state budget, reach out to our newsroom.