Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at one time or another. For some folks it’s probably something they do too often. Live Sdy guess for me personally, the bad buying habit is processed foods. If I had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets over time, I may have been rich by now instead of overweight. Like anything, whether it’s food or gambling one should do it in moderation, and that is often not easy to accomplish.
Here in hawaii of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have been a big hit every since.
I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of every available price range in my state. I usually buy the $1 – $2 tickets, but from time to time I purchase a $5 – $10 ticket, and one time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not even $1 or perhaps a FREE ticket, in order that was like throwing out my $20. You would think that with needing to spend that much money, they might give everyone at least a FREE $1 ticket or something. I thought afterwards that I was sort of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on one ticket, but heck as they say, “Unless you play, you can’t win !”, it was a gamble, and I didn’t win that point. I’ve known two individuals who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. So I can say for certain, “yes, some people do win it big.”
Unlike the live lottery that is usually drawn by picking numbers, the moment lottery is pre-determined months before it’s release. The tickets are designed and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers throughout the state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, and also the large chain stores. You can usually find them in a vending machine with multiple styles and prices to choose from, or they’re at the cashiers area on the counter or behind a shielded section. Instant lottery tickets sell for only $1 and as high as $20 each in most states of the U.S. but some states may have tickets that sell for even more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to help fund many different programs. For instance in Pennsylvania, the lottery is used to create funds to benefit programs for the Commonwealth’s older residents. In Ohio, since 1974, the Lottery has provided more than $13 billion to public education. Annually, the lottery provides about 4.5 percent of the funding necessary for Ohio’s public education. In Missouri, approximately 27.3 cents of every dollar spent on the Lottery benefits education programs; 61.6 cents dates back to players as prizes, 5 cents can be used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents goes to retailers in the form of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In all, more than 93 cents of each dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for each state, but the lottery is very beneficial regardless of the few problems it could cause to some, in the form of gambling addictions.
Most folks buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and if they don’t win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know that each time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you are throwing money away ? Yes, you can find literally hundreds if not thousands of folks around the world that would love to buy your tickets from you. I have seen losing lottery tickets sell for as high as $15 each, they were tickets that had no redeemable value. I once went to an area convenience store and asked them easily could have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw that they had on the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them to me, I took the tickets home and after checking through them all, I found two which were $1 winners that were not redeemed, and I sold the rest of the losing tickets for $30, and the store was just going to throw them away.
Where did I sell them ? On eBay. I happened to look 1 day and I noticed there was losing instant lottery tickets on the market on the eBay auction website. There are folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay on a regular basis. I simply did a search now while writing this short article, and I found over 100 different auction listings for them. Who buys these non-winning lottery tickets ? Collectors.
Instant Lottery Ticket collecting is fast becoming a big thing. There are groups and individuals all around the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are plenty of websites, discussion groups and forums now simply for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is even a new term or name for an instant lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the moment lottery ticket collecting hobby is called: LOTOLOGY. To observe how big this hobby is now just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And you may find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.