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 personally, the bad buying habit is processed foods. If I had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets over the years, I may have already been rich by now rather than overweight. Like anything, whether it’s food or gambling one must do it in moderation, which is often not easy to do.
Here in hawaii of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have already been a big hit every since.
I have bought instant lottery tickets of each available price range in my state. I usually buy the $1 – $2 tickets, but once in awhile I purchase a $5 – $10 ticket, and one time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not $1 or perhaps a FREE ticket, in order that was like throwing out my $20. You would believe that 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 they say, “If you don’t play, you can’t win !”, it had been a gamble, and I didn’t win that time. I have known two individuals who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. THEREFORE I can say for certain, “yes, some folks 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 through the entire state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, along with the large chain stores. It is possible to usually see them in a vending machine with multiple styles and prices to choose from, or they are at the cashiers area on the counter or behind a shielded section. Instant lottery tickets sell for as low as $1 and as high as $20 each in most states of the U.S. however, many states could have tickets that sell for a lot more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to help fund many different programs. For example in Pennsylvania, the lottery is 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 is used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents would go to retailers in the form of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In every, more than 93 cents of each dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for each and every state, but the lottery is very beneficial despite the few problems it can cause to some, in the form of gambling addictions.
Most folks buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and when they don’t really win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know each and every 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 purchase 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 a local convenience store and asked them easily could have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw 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 that 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 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 lunchtime -winning lottery tickets ? Collectors.
Instant Lottery Ticket collecting is fast learning to be a big thing. There are groups and individuals all around the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are lots of 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 moment lottery ticket collecting hobby is named: LOTOLOGY. To see 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 could find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.