The dream of striking it rich is even more expensive now.

Last week, lottery officials raised the price of a Mega Millions ticket from $2 to $5, and while they say the prize amounts were five times greater for last week’s initial drawing, others are a little turned off by the more than 100% increase.

“If you think about it, it's more than double. She just hasn't played it,” Jim Prather said of his wife. “She might, she hasn't played it since, but she may play it again, you never know,” he continued before purchasing the scratch-off game he prefers to lottery tickets.

Tanya Golden was also a Mega Millions player in the past, and she is already reconsidering.

“Probably lay off, cut back a little on it, not play as much. $5 kind of expensive,” Golden said inside a Sunoco gas station, where lottery tickets and other games of chance are sold at a brisk pace.

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“People used to play (Mega Millions) a lot more,” said station manager Deepti Patel. “They would come in before, buy like 10 tickets at a time, or 20 tickets, but now they're reduced to 2 or 5 because it costs them more."

Patel thinks sales of Mega Millions tickets won’t be depressed for too long, attributing some of the decline to peoples’ lack of knowledge over the price change.

A manager at another station was told by his lottery representative that Mega Millions increased the price of a ticket to distinguish itself from its Powerball competitor, whose ticket remains $2.

Lottery officials say the odds of winning are slightly increased under this new matrix, and they estimate the jackpots will be much larger, too.

This story was originally published by Michael Berk with the Scripps News Group.