Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at once or another. For a few folks it’s probably something they do all too often. I guess for me personally, the bad buying habit is junk food. If I had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets through the years, I may have already been rich by now instead of overweight. Like anything, whether it’s food or gambling one must do it in moderation, which is often not easy to accomplish.
Here in hawaii of Pennsylvania where I live, the initial scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have already been a big hit every since.
I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of every available price range in my own state. I usually choose the $1 – $2 tickets, but once in awhile I buy a $5 – $10 ticket, and something time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not $1 or perhaps a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing out my $20. You would believe with needing to spend that much money, they would 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 using 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 have 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 ahead of it’s release. The tickets are designed and printed, they are distributed to the lottery retailers throughout the state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, in addition to the large chain stores. You can usually see them in a vending machine with multiple styles and price ranges 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 generally in most states of the U.S. but some states could have tickets that sell for a lot more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to greatly help fund many different programs. For Bandar Togel in Pennsylvania, the lottery can be used to generate funds to benefit programs for the Commonwealth’s older residents. In Ohio, since 1974, the Lottery has provided a lot 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 each dollar allocated to the Lottery benefits education programs; 61.6 cents goes back to players as prizes, 5 cents can be used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents would go 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 every state, but the lottery is very beneficial regardless of the few problems it could cause to some, by means of gambling addictions.
Most folks buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and when they don’t win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know that each and every time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you are throwing money away ? Yes, there are literally hundreds if not a large number 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, these were tickets that had no redeemable value. I once went to an area convenience store and asked them if I 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 all of them, 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 one day and I noticed there is losing instant lottery tickets for sale on the eBay auction website. There are folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay all the time. I simply did a search now while writing this article, and I came across over 100 different auction listings for them. Who buys these non-winning lottery tickets ? Collectors.
Instant Lottery Ticket collecting is fast learning to be a big thing. There are groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are various websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is a good new term or name for an instantaneous lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the moment lottery ticket collecting hobby is named: LOTOLOGY. To see how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you may find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.