Lottery Ticket

A lottery ticket is an item found primarily in Nipton.

Characteristics
Lottery tickets appear as small, square, gold-embossed pieces of paper bearing text "Nevada State Lotto", with "Big Ranch" below it.

Given to Nipton inhabitants during Caesar's Legion's "cleansing" of the town, lottery tickets were used to determine who would die in what fashion and, more rarely, who would live. Tickets can be found scattered throughout Nipton, usually near the bodies of the town's murdered inhabitants.

Lottery tickets come in two varieties: a version worth 1 cap, and a more rare version worth 10 caps. There are 51 copies of the "common" ticket and 16 copies of the "valuable" version, including a "valuable" ticket carried by Nipton survivor Oliver Swanick.

There is also a small stack of valuable lottery tickets sitting on a shelf behind the desk of the mayor's reception desk, in the top floor of the Nipton Hall.

Lottery tickets serve no functional purpose within the game. However, they can be sold to any merchant or trader for profit. In this regard they are similar to Pre-War money.

Behind the scenes
The State of Nevada has never had a State Lottery. A provision in the original draft of the state constitution prohibits state-run lotteries, and has remained in effect since the constitution's signing in 1864. However, the real-life town of Nipton (located in California) experienced a small boom in the 1980s due in part to it having a California State Lottery Office in town—the closest Lottery Office to the Nevada state line.

During development Nipton Mayor Steyn was to appear in the game. His only possessions were to be a Grimy Pre-War businesswear and a single "valuable" lottery ticket.

This occurence is a reference to Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story The Lottery. In the story, the winner of the lottery is stoned to death by friends and family in the middle of the town.