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 all too often. I guess for me, the bad buying habit is processed foods. If I had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets through the years, I may have been rich by now rather than overweight. Like anything, be it 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 came out in 1975, and they have been a large 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 a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing out my $20. You would believe with having to spend that much money, they would give everyone at least a free of charge $1 ticket or something. I thought afterwards that I was kind of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on one ticket, but heck as the saying goes, “If you don’t 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. THEREFORE I can say for certain, “yes, some people do win it big.”
Unlike the live lottery that is usually drawn by picking numbers, the instant 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, along with 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 help fund many different programs. For instance 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, live draw hari ini provides about 4.5 percent of the funding necessary for Ohio’s public education. In Missouri, approximately 27.3 cents of every 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 goes to retailers by means of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In all, more than 93 cents of every dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for every state, but the lottery is quite beneficial despite the few problems it can cause to some, by means 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, there are literally hundreds if not a large number of folks around the world that would love to buy your tickets from you. I’ve seen losing lottery tickets sell for as high as $15 each, these were tickets that had no redeemable value. I once went to a local 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 them all, I found two which were $1 winners which were not redeemed, and I sold the remaining losing tickets for $30, and the store was just going to throw them away.
Where did I sell them ? On eBay. I happened to check 1 day and I noticed there was losing instant lottery tickets for sale 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 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 learning to be a big thing. You can find groups and individuals all around the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are many websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is a good new term or name for an instant lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the instant lottery ticket collecting hobby is named: LOTOLOGY. To see how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite internet search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you could find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.