Lottery Ticket

The lottery ticket is a miscellaneous item in Fallout: New Vegas.

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

Lottery tickets were given to Nipton inhabitants during Caesar's Legion's "cleansing" of the town, 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 rarer 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 Mayor Steyn's reception desk, located on the top floor of Nipton Hall.

Lottery tickets are similar to Pre-War money in that, while they serve no true purpose, they can be sold to vendors for a reasonable price considering they have no weight and lack any practical application.

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