A man from Vlissingen who checked his 2018 state lottery ticket just days before the final deadline on December 31 2019  is richer by €50,000 while another late winner picked up a Mini car, RTL Nieuws reports.

The two were among a group of six people who had failed to claim their prize a year ago. Last month state lottery Staatsloterij urged people to check their tickets to see if they were among the lucky few.

‘The man who won the €50,000 said he had forgotten to check his ticket at the time and couldn’t believe he had won because he had never won anything in his life,’ a spokesman told RTL.

The 2019 Staatsloterij bumper prize was picked up by two half tickets sold in Krommenie and Enschedé, leaving the winners with €15m each. A big chunk of the Postcode lottery prize of €54.7m went to players who shared the postal code 2151 BZ in Nieuw-Vennep.

People living within the winning postcode area won between €158,000 and €8.8m – depending on how many tickets they had bought.

Nine people became multimillionaires at a stroke, RTL said.