PATHANAMTHITTA: For 63-year-old K J Rajan, lotteries have never been merely about luck or prize money. For nearly six decades, the retired town planning department employee has been collecting lottery tickets, turning a childhood fascination into an unusual hobby and a personal archive of Keralam’s lottery history.
A native of Kulanada, near Pandalam, Rajan began collecting stubs in 1968, when he was five years old. While his friends collected matchbox labels and bus tickets, Rajan was fascinated by lottery tokens. He began buying them himself in 1978, saving money from small jobs he did before joining government service.
Today, his collection runs into over Rs 13 lakh in value and includes tickets from almost every phase of Keralam’s lottery history.
Early state lotteries, bumper draws, controversial sports lotteries, and Monsoon, Sabarimala, May Day and Super Lotto tickets, besides Jai Bhagya Mala issued for the housing scheme of police personnel, are all part of his collection. He has also preserved lottery tickets issued by several other states.
The collection offers a glimpse into how prizes and prices have changed over the decades. Rajan has preserved the stub of the first Christmas bumper, drawn on January 19, 1969, when it cost just Rs 1 and the prize was Rs 1 lakh along with an Ambassador car.
The Rs 1-ticket to the Vishu bumper of April 1970, the second bumper lottery, carried a prize of Rs 3 lakh. The first Onam bumper was drawn on September 10, 1970, with a ticket priced at rs 1 and a prize of Rs 5 lakh. From those early tickets to the latest Onam bumper carrying a prize of Rs 25 crore, Rajan has preserved them all.
Interestingly, luck has never been the reason behind the purchases.
“I never buy lotteries hoping to win a prize. Collecting the tokens is my hobby,” says Rajan.
Though he has won prizes on a few occasions, none has exceeded Rs 5,000. Yet, the absence of a major prize has done little to diminish his enthusiasm. His collection has grown over the years, with thousands of stubs carefully bundled and preserved at his home.
Rajan has even received rare tickets from people who came to know about his unusual passion. He also has a dedicated album for his tickets. He has conducted exhibitions at several places to introduce the younger generations to the history of lotteries.
After 58 years of collecting, Rajan continues to seek rare tickets that can add to his collection.
This year, too, Rajan bought Onam bumper tickets from across the state, continuing a decades-old tradition despite having little expectation of winning a big prize.
Rajan’s wife, Shobha, is a retired employee of the education department. Their daughter K R Gauri is a dentist in Bengaluru.
