Only one store sells lottery tickets in Sheffield and its customers keep hitting it big

After five decades of selling countless lottery tickets, a family-owned liquor store in Sheffield hit its first lucky streak last year.

Silk’s Variety is the only store that sells lottery tickets in the 3,000-person town. Yet, it’s one of just three lottery retailers in Massachusetts to sell multiple winning $1 million tickets in 2024.

The town is such a tight-knit community that store owner Susan Silk knows practically everyone who walks in her store — especially the lottery players, her most regular customers.

So, when lottery officials told her there was a third big winner on Nov. 18, 2024, Silk knew exactly who it was. The prize was from a crossword game that just a couple of her regular customers play, and Silk called the winner as he drove back from lottery headquarters with his check.

”I feel like whoever buys a ticket in my town, I’m in it with them,” Silk, 54, told MassLive on Jan. 13.

The store is, actually, in it with them.

It received a $30,000 bonus for its sale of the three tickets this year, which Silk said has “gone back into the store.”

“We’re a small town, and this is a place where everyone knows everyone … they’re not just customers to me, they’re my community,” Silk said.

Located across from the library and near the police and fire departments at 107 Main St., Silk’s Variety is a cornerstone in the heart of Berkshire County’s oldest town.

That history is evident on the walls and windows of the package store, where the hand-painted, yellow words “Legal Beverages” have been on the glass for 40 years and a paper bus route sign is stapled to a wall in the back.

Before anybody won last year, Silk put out a sign over her lottery tickets that read, “Everyone is a winner at Silk’s.”

The lucky store owner doesn’t just take pride in her community store — she was born for this. Her birthday, April 6, is the same date of the Massachusetts State Lottery’s first-ever drawing in 1972.

And buried beneath an old cash drawer in the back of the shop, still intact, is a 50-cent lottery ticket dated 1976 from “The Big Money Game.”

The three $1 million prizes won from the shop in 2024 were the first time anyone had ever won more than $100,000 at Silk’s Variety since it became an original lottery agent in 1974. The other two shops that sold multiple $1 million prizes last year were a Pride Station in East Longmeadow and the Old South Diner on Nantucket.

Two of Silk’s winners were Sheffield natives and regular lottery customers, Silk said, including Jonathan Seward — the partner of her best friend and store manager, Jamie Seward, 53.

Jonathan Seward bought a “$5,000,000 100X Cashword” ticket for $20 on a chilly January morning last year and let the ticket sit, unscratched, in his vehicle’s visor all day, Jamie Seward said.

As she recalled the serendipitous story this past week, Seward flitted back and forth between the front of the store and the beer freezers, where Silk and Silk’s son, Patrick, 23, were standing. The trio wore matching hoodies that read “Silk’s Variety” in yellow and white lettering.

“That was crazy. I was the one that pulled the ticket [for him at the store] … and then he scratched it and I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’” Jamie Seward called out from the cash register as she helped a customer.

The store

Rumored to be an old-school house, Silk’s Variety used to be a drugstore called Sheffield Pharmacy when the Silk family first purchased the space in 1963. It became a liquor store in 1986, and Silk took over the store with her husband, James “Jim” Silk, in 1994.

Silk’s Variety is not only a family business, but a home. Memories of the family’s lives together are embedded throughout the store — especially in the above apartment, where the family lived and raised Patrick Silk and his sister for many years.

There are notches on the doorway leading upstairs marking the children’s heights as they grew.

Jim Silk died suddenly in 2015, leaving the family and the store without him.

Yet, his presence still lingers in the shop, with some of his photographs displayed on the front counter.

Susan Silk’s blue eyes grew teary as she talked about her late husband.

”It’s emotional, I’m not going to lie,” Susan Silk said. “It’s just something I wanted to keep going for my kids, and for them to get out of college and then do what they want. He’s [Patrick] decided to stay, and she’s [her daughter] decided to do a different profession.”

The Silks’ son, Patrick Silk, now lives in the apartment above the store with his girlfriend. He plans on carrying on his family legacy once his mother retires.

”I just want to keep it going, really,” Patrick Silk, a business graduate from Johnson & Wales University, said. “Yeah, I don’t really see anything else.”

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