SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – Wannabe multimillionaires – from lottery regulars to gigantic-jackpots-only players – snapped up tickets Friday for a long shot at $330 million in the multistate Mega Millions lottery.

Though still a small fortune shy of a record sum, the whopping payout up for grabs in the Friday night drawing proved too tempting to ignore for folks such as Shawn Wallace, who said she rarely buys tickets.

“I’m not real good at the lottery, but the jackpot’s so big,” Wallace, a 31-year-old computer technician who bought two $1 tickets at a Savannah convenience store. “I happened to look up and see it on a sign and said, “Oh, I have to play the lottery.”‘

The mega-jackpot was paying off for Savannah retailers near Georgia’s border with South Carolina, which isn’t among the 12 states where Mega Millions tickets are sold.

Peggy Davis, a manager at Brown’s Chevron in downtown Savannah, said the store had sold more than $1,000 in Mega Millions tickets by noon Friday.

“That’s about two or three times what we’d normally sell by that time of the day,” said Davis, who expected heavier sales once people left work. “There will probably be a line in here at the end of the day.”

In Buffalo, N.Y., a Wilson Farms convenience story had a steady line of eight-to-10 people waiting to buy lottery tickets.

“It’s been crazy.” cashier Ashley Woloszyn said. “People are buying $100 worth at a time, for themselves, for offices. They’re flying.”

Woloszyn, 19, said she’d probably keep working even if she won $330 million, prompting customer Jim Dole to chime in as he stepped up to buy $20 in tickets: “You need to see a shrink.”

Though the odds of winning were nearly 1-in-176 million, the big prize had players dreaming – both large and small – of how they’d spend the money.

Charlie Adams, 63, of Orlando, Fla., said he and his wife would buy a summer home in Alaska if one of the 15 tickets he bought in Savannah hit the jackpot.

In downtown Boston, meanwhile, paralegal Jay Horn was being a little more thrifty, saying he had his eye on a plane ticket to Key West, Fla., if he won.

“It’s not something you ever hope for,” said Horan, 55. “It’s like everything else in life, you’ve got to take a shot, you know. I don’t expect to win, but I don’t expect to lose either.”

While many players tried to boost their odds with multiple tickets, Herbert Green of Savannah stuck with the system he’s used to play the lottery twice a week for the past 18 months – just a single ticket with numbers combining the birthdays of his two sons and his younger brother.

“It’s tempting to do another,” said Green, a 48-year-old stockroom worker. “But it only takes one to win. That’s my point.”

A $390 million Mega Millions jackpot, the largest lottery prize in U.S. history, was split two-ways in March between a truck driver from Dalton, Ga., and a couple in Cape May County, N.J.

Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.