Decades of Dollars

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Decades of Dollars (DoD) was an American lottery game that began as a multi-state game in January 2011, though by its end, only the Virginia Lottery offered it. [1] Georgia and Kentucky joined Virginia in launching DoD; Arkansas joined in May 2011. (DoD replaced Win for Life in Kentucky; WFL ended in 2014 as a Virginia-only game.)

DoD became a Virginia-only game in October 2014 when the other three states joined the Monopoly Millionaires' Club drawing game. DoD held its final drawing on April 30, 2015; Virginia replaced it with the multi-state Cash4Life, becoming its fourth member, but non-contiguous with its other three states.

Decades of Dollars was drawn Monday and Thursday nights. DoD winners had a choice of 30 annual payments of $250,000 each (minus withholdings) or a lump sum of $4,000,000.

Each Decades of Dollars game cost $2; players chose 6 numbers from 1 through 47.

DoD prize structure:

Unexpectedly, none of the game's first 112 drawings produced a top-prize winner (of either payment option.) Finally, for the March 5, 2012 drawing, a ticket sold in Georgia matched all six numbers.

Arkansas never produced a top prize in DoD.

All Decades of Dollars top-prize winners chose the cash option.

Decades of Dollars drawings were conducted by the Georgia Lottery at WSB-TV in Atlanta (which hosts Mega Millions drawings); the ball sets and drawing machines moved to Virginia.

The first drawing game which linked Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia was Lotto South , which began in 2001 and ended in 2006. That game was replaced by Win for Life ; the three states offered WFL into 2011, when Kentucky dropped it as part of the launch of DoD. Georgia pulled out of WFL a few months before Virginia discontinued the game.

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References

  1. "Three state lotteries set to begin new multi-state game". Lottery Post. 11 January 2011.
  2. Thrash, Rodney (October 22, 2014). "Atlanta man who has driven truck for 54 years gets ultimate load". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.