Mega Millions Has a Winner For a $333 Million Jackpot...

Mega Millions has a winner for the $333 million jackpot. Actually two winner and here are the Mega Millions winning numbers for the August 28 drawing: 1-17-31-37-54 (one, seventeen, thirty-one, thirty-seven, fifty-four) Mega Ball: 31 (thirty-one).

I would love to say I was the winner, but unfortunately I am not. If I did win I would be looking forward to choosing either a lump-sum cash payment or annuity payment. If there is a jackpot winner tonight of the $333 million and he or she chooses the annual payment plan, they would receive $12.8 million per year, before taxes, for the next 26 years.

A lump sum option is based on how many U.S. Treasury's that half of the ticket sales can purchase on the day that the winner claims the prize. A jackpot of this size would result in a lump sum of approximately $194 million before taxes.

A total of 12 states participate in the Mega Millions including: California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington. I had to go out to our state line of Nevada and California to get my now non winning ticket.

So what could you buy with $333 million? Well, you could:

Get 127,439,724 gallons of gas.


Buy 714,408 shares of Google.


Buy 145,038 Panasonic 58-inch plasma TVs


Buy 876 Rolls Royce Phantoms


Buy one Phoenix Coyotes team

If there is a winner tonight it would be the third highest jackpot. Number one being $390,000,000 on 3/6/07 and the second $365,000,000 on 2/18/06.

The winning tickets, which are worth an estimated $166.5 million each, were purchased in San Gabriel, California and the Bronx, New York.

Although I didn't win tonight it certainly was fun to imagine what if.