Here’s What You Could Buy With a $1.7 Billion Powerball Jackpot

A superyacht? Sure. A trip to space? Why not?

Andre Ellington and John Waggoner,

Updated December 23, 2025

AARP

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Published November 14, 2025

/ Updated December 23, 2025

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Can you imagine what you’d do with $1.7 billion? That’s the estimated jackpot for the Powerball drawing on Christmas Eve. It’s the fourth-largest jackpot in Powerball history.

The possibilities are endless. But before you get excited, know that you’ll have to pay Uncle Sam a hefty portion of your earnings — 24 percent in federal taxes off the top, to be exact. Also, you’ll need to decide between annuity payments spread over 30 years and a lump sum of roughly $781.3 million before taxes.

Still, it’s fun to dream. Let’s explore what you could buy if you suddenly had $1.7 billion in your bank account.

3 Jeff Bezos-worthy yachts

The Amazon founder owns a 417-foot-long schooner that cost an estimated $500 million. Koru has a 246-foot-long support ship, Abeona, which has a helipad, just in case you forget to pick up a loaf of bread on the way back from Monaco. With $1.7 billion, you could have three superyachts the size of Bezos’.

the hope diamond repeated on a pink background

AARP (Source: Smithsonian)

3 of the world’s most valuable diamonds

Everybody knows about the Hope Diamond. The 45.5-carat gem was worth an estimated $350 million in 2024 (although removing its curse would probably cost extra). With your Powerball winnings, you could buy that big blue rock and the even more expensive Cullinan Diamond, a collection of gems cut from the largest rough diamond ever found and valued at $400 million — and still have $400 million left to expand your collection of fine jewelry.

16 F-35 fighter planes

Lots of rich folks have private planes. But do they have one that can wreak terror from the sky? You could, assuming any country in its right mind would sell you the U.S.’s most advanced warplane. In fact, you could have a fleet of 16 of the roughly $101.5 million airplanes (airport storage not included).

Top 10 Powerball Jackpots So Far

$2.04 billion — Nov. 7, 2022
$1.79 billion — Sept. 6, 2025
$1.77 billion — Oct. 11, 2023
$1.59 billion — Jan. 13, 2016
$1.33 billion — April 6, 2024
$1.08 billion — July 19, 2023
$842 million — Jan. 1, 2024
$768 million — March 27, 2019
$759 million — Aug. 23, 2017
$755 million — Feb. 6, 2023

Source: powerball.com

30 SpaceX Tourist Trips

Fancy a trip to outer space? You could get your chance to see the world in a 13-foot-wide SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. To boot, you’ll go around the globe every 90 minutes. And, because the trip costs $55 million per seat, you could make that voyage 30 times.

134 Mickey Mantle rookie cards

Collectors argue about which baseball card is worth the most, but the 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card is hard to beat. It fetched $12.6 million at auction in 2022.

2,266 shares of Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Buffett’s fabled money-management prowess has launched the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, his holding company, to $750,006 per Class A share at the close of trading on Dec. 22. As a shareholder, you could attend the company’s annual meeting, which has been described as “Woodstock for capitalists.” Plus, you’d probably score plenty of Dilly Bars and Coke at the event, since Berkshire owns Dairy Queen and a big chunk of Coca-Cola.

2,794 Lamborghini Revueltos

The Lambo is one of the fastest and priciest cars on the road, particularly the Revuelto model. Each one costs around $608,358, and you could buy 2,794 of them with your winnings.

380,364 ounces of gold

Want to show off your riches? What better way to say “I’m loaded” than with gold? At $4,469.40 an ounce as of Dec. 22, $1.7 billion would get you 380,364 ounces of the precious metal. But you’d better have a sturdy floor in your personal Fort Knox: That much gold weighs in at more than 23,000 pounds.

29.3 million barrels of oil

Concerned about having enough fuel for those Lamborghinis? Fear not. With crude oil prices at about $58 a barrel as of Dec. 23, your $1.7 billion could buy more than 29.3 million barrels.

AARP (Source: Alamy Stock Photo)

1.7 billion boxes of Kraft Original Macaroni & Cheese

All that worrying about what to buy calls for comfort food, and you can’t do much better for that than mac and cheese. In late December, Walmart was selling Kraft Original Macaroni & Cheese for $1.24 per box. That’s 1,370,967,742 boxes of cheesy goodness.

283 million tall Starbucks caramel Frappuccinos

Starbucks is known for its tasty drinks, perhaps especially its caramel Frappuccinos. If you had $1.7 billion, you could buy more than 283.3 million tall ones at around $6 apiece, depending on the location.

85 million AARP annual memberships

An AARP membership costs $20 a year, so with $1.7 billion, you could buy a membership for 85 million of your closest friends. That would be enough to make more than half of Americans age 50-plus part of the AARP family.

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Andre J. Ellington is an award-winning writer based in Michigan. His work has been featured in Newsweek, HuffPost and Yahoo News.

John Waggoner is a contributing writer of all things financial for AARP, from budgeting and taxes to retirement planning and Social Security. Previously, he was a reporter for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and USA Today and has written books on investing and the 2008 financial crisis. Waggoner’s USA Today investing column ran in dozens of newspapers for 25 years.