It was late afternoon in June. Le Tuan Anh, 32, from Long An, carried a heavy backpack with tens of kilograms of lottery tickets inside and came to see Duc. He wanted to meet and chat with the "sale agent of lottery tickets with the most beautiful numbers in the south".

In HCM City, Duc is a famous man in the community of lottery ticket collectors for his original collection of hundreds of thousands of tickets.

The tickets are of different types, including ones issued during Tet, issued on the occasions of historical events, or to mark certain milestones in the country’s history and other thematic tickets.

Duc said he began collecting tickets in 2002. At that time, he saw tickets with the images of footballers and liked them very much. He bought tickets and kept them. These were the first lottery tickets of his collection with themes about football.

After that, he began collecting lottery tickets about spring because he loved the way of decorating tickets and the beauty of the large-size and colorful tickets. 

His hobby of collecting lottery tickets was growing day after day, and he began thinking about collecting special tickets: for example, the tickets with original numbers, such as 00000 and 44444; with folklore paintings, or with beautiful landscapes of the country. 

He also keeps tickets that won special prizes. The tickets are kept in an album with hundreds of pages.

“When I began collecting lottery tickets, it was very difficult to find tickets with special numbers, because sale agents rarely sold the tickets. They thought the owners of these tickets would not get prizes,” he said.

He asked for help from sale agents, asking them to reserve tickets with the same numbers and other special numbers for him.

Duc said he has great passion for lottery tickets. In the past, when he was still working, he bought tickets every day. He also contacted many sale agents and asked them find tickets with beautiful numbers for him.

It was difficult work which required a lot of effort, because there were tickets which were issued only in the north or central region. He estimates that the total amount of money he has had to pay so far to buy tickets is more than VND1 billion.

“When I can buy lottery tickets with beautiful numbers, I feel very happy. I consider this a new success. If I cannot buy the tickets I like, I feel sad and unhappy,” he said.

He meets and communicates with men with the same passion for collecting lottery tickets every day. If they don’t meet, he opene his collection and entertains himself by seeing the tickets.

“This work makes be relax and enjoy life,” he said.

Duc’s 2-storey home is now full of lottery tickets. Considering his tickets as a treasure, Duc takes loving care of them. The tickets are put in separate plastic bags, which are put in albums left in paper boxes containing moisture-proof bags and anti-termite powder.

To protect the tickets, he puts the tickets in places in a dark room, away from strong light. He even accepts the scorching summer heat and never turns on an air conditioner as he fears this will damage the tickets.

“Low temperature and high humidity will damage them. It is very hot in summer, but I only use electric fans,” he said.

In fact, the electric fan is used mostly for the lottery tickets, not used to cool Duc. He said the fan can ventilate the room. Every day, he has to open carton boxes for examination to be sure that there are no signs of the albums getting moldy.

Ha Nguyen