NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Last week one lucky lottery player cashed in a winning Mega Millions ticket worth as much as $183 million, and now, a week later, the rival Powerball game will be paying more than $260 million to two lucky winners.

Call it the Summer of Cash.

Lottery officials said two winning Powerball tickets were sold in Missouri and Pennsylvania, for Wednesday night's jackpot. The winning numbers were 19, 21, 26, 31, 51, with a Powerball number of 40.

Since May 10, the jackpot had grown to $261.3 million -- the fourth largest Powerball jackpot and the largest lottery jackpot in the world this year -- after no one matched all six numbers in the 17 previous drawings.

Taken together, the Powerball and Mega Millions payouts equal more than $400 million, and represent two of the six biggest jackpots of all time. They also provide further evidence of the biggest trend in lotteries since states began to legalize numbers games in the 1960s.

Prizes have grown so gargantuan that anything less than $100 million looks like chump change.

"Jackpots have definitely increased tremendously," says Jimmy White, a spokesman for the Maryland Lottery. The reason: The emergence over the last decade of the multi-state game.

"When each state had only its own jackpot game, the biggest prizes were in the range of $5 [million] or $10 million," White notes. "Then along came games in which jackpots are fueled by the sales of tickets in many states."

Sadly, though, there's a yin to the big-money yang. While payouts have expanded, the chances of winning have shrunk. According to White, the odds on a big, single-state sweepstakes are about 6 million to 1.

To win Mega Millions, Maryland resident Bernadette Gietka overcame odds of about 135 million to 1. In Powerball, the odds are 120 million to 1.

As any gambler knows, the house is always the biggest winner. So it's no surprise that states have taken to lotteries like white on rice.

About 51 percent of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket every year, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. What's more, the big payouts are drawing new players.

"People who would never buy otherwise decide they might as well get in the game," White says.

Super sweepstakes The biggest individual sweepstakes prizes to date. A $363 million Mega Millions prize was shared by two winners. Location  Date  Amount  West Virginia  12/25/02  $315 million  Indiana  7/29/98  $296 million  Massachusetts  4/6/99  $197 million  Wisconsin  5/20/99  $195 million  Maryland  6/20/03  $183 million   Source:  Multi-state Lottery Association

In fact, Jack Whittaker -- the West Virginia man whose $315 million win is the biggest in history -- said he only started playing the game after its take crossed the $100 million threshold.

These are heady days for the two consortia running multi-state games. Powerball, based in Iowa, was formed in 1988 and is played in 24 states, plus Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Mega Millions, launched in 1995 as the Big Game, has 10 states in its consortium.

Both multi-state games offer a minimum prize of $10 million, and both pay out approximately 50 percent of their revenue to winners. As each consortium grows, obviously, revenue and payout potential rise commensurately.

In this week's Powerball, Vermont looks to be a big winner. The state joined the consortium and started selling tickets last week, according to Joe Mahoney, a spokesman for the Multi-state Lottery Association, which runs the game.

"Vermont opens an interesting new border," says Mahoney. "People are coming in from Canada, especially Montreal, to buy tickets."

Up until now, state lottery commissions have had to choose one or the other. Powerball states tend to be smaller. Mega Millions boasts more populous states, including New York, Illinois and Massachusetts.

With only a few unaffiliated states remaining, a new possibility has emerged amid competition to sign up one of the biggest prizes still out there: Texas.

The Lone Star State is in the process of considering whether to join up with Mega Millions or Powerball. Texas Lottery Commission head Tom Clowe has made a provocative suggestion: Why not join both?

"It's something we ought to really, seriously think about," the Austin American-Statesman quoted Clowe as saying.

Both sides pledged to consider the notion.

Mega Millions winner Gietka, 54, opted to receive a lump sum payout of $112 million, rather than the larger prize of $183 million, which would have been an annuity paid out in 26 annual increments.

"Almost everyone takes the up-front payment," says the MSLA's Mahoney.

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It's the same with Mega Millions. "The vast majority go for the cash," White says.

Mahoney argues that the annuity is a better choice, at least in the hypothetical.

"If you were to win $100 million, the cash option might be about $59 million," he estimates. "Taxes get taken out right away, so you start with just over $40 million. There's no way you're going to get a high enough annual return every year to build that up to $100 million over the life of the annuity."

For his part, though, White understands why someone would choose the lump sum payment.

"We never tell people what to do," he says, noting that his business is doling out money, not financial advice. "But most winners would say it's a no-brainer to go for the cash."

In the case of Gietka, the Mega Millions winner, a $112 million pre-tax payment will net out to $76 million after the government takes its cut.

"That's enough money to really change your life," White says, in an eight-digit understatement.