INSTANT TAKE 5
New York game #1574 · $1 a ticket · prize data from September 13, 2026
What it returns
cash back per $1 spent, with annuity prizes discounted to what a winner can collect today.
Somewhere between $0.24 and $0.60. That range is not decoration: it is how far the figure moves depending on how many tickets are really left, which no state publishes. A narrow range means the estimate is solid; a wide one means treat the headline number as a hint.
It is below $1 here and on every scratch-off ever printed. That is how lotteries fund themselves, and no game on this site is an exception.
How many tickets are left
| Printed | 137,616,447 | the whole print run |
|---|---|---|
| Sold | 127,823,270 – 133,754,199 | estimated, roughly 95 % of the run |
| Left | 3,862,248 – 9,793,177 | estimated, around 6,827,712 |
certainly sold could go either way still on the shelf
No state publishes tickets sold, so this is inferred from the small prize tiers, which are cashed at the counter within days. Large prizes must be claimed at a lottery office and lag by weeks, so pooling every tier makes a game look less sold than it is. The width of the middle band is how much that inference could be wrong — and it is why the return figure above has a range rather than a decimal place.
Prizes left, by level
“Odds now” is the chance of winning that amount or more on one ticket, given what is left today. The last column compares what remains at each level against what this game’s sell-through would predict.
| Prize | Left | Printed | Odds now | At launch | Compared to expected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,555 | 24 | 95 | 1 in 284,488 | 1 in 1,448,594 | more left than expected |
| $500 | 102 | 865 | 1 in 54,188 | 1 in 143,350 | more left than expected |
| $100 | 318 | 4,324 | 1 in 15,378 | 1 in 26,044 | more left than expected |
| $40 | 953 | 16,649 | 1 in 4,887 | 1 in 6,274 | more left than expected |
| $20 | 6,940 | 207,580 | 1 in 819 | 1 in 600 | picked over |
| $10 | 16,160 | 467,120 | 1 in 279 | 1 in 198 | picked over |
| $5 | 65,451 | 2,179,460 | 1 in 76 | 1 in 48 | picked over |
| $2 | 83,524 | 2,179,607 | 1 in 39 | 1 in 27 | picked over |
| $1 | 1,010,205 | 18,267,040 | 1 in 6 | 1 in 6 | as expected |
| $1 | 272,434 | 6,019,786 | 1 in 5 | 1 in 5 | as expected |
The top prize
Advertised at $5,555, with 24 left. It is one ticket out of millions. The rest of the table above is what you are actually buying.
Not affiliated with the New York Lottery. Figures are derived from the prize counts the state publishes daily and are only as current as that publication.