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 junk food. EASILY had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets over time, 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 the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the initial scratch off ticket came out 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 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 away my $20. You would believe that with needing 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 sort 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 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 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, as well as the large chain stores. You can 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 so when high as $20 each in most states of the U.S. but some states could have tickets that sell for even more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to greatly help fund many different programs. For example in Pennsylvania, the lottery can be used to create 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 dates back to players as prizes, 5 cents is used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents goes to retailers in the form of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In every, more than 93 cents of every dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for each state, but the lottery is very beneficial despite the few problems it could 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 every time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you are throwing money away ? Yes, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of folks around the world that would love to purchase 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. Live HK went to an area convenience store and asked them easily may 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 rest of the losing tickets for $30, and the store was just likely 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 for sale on the eBay auction website. You can find folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay at all times. I just 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 learning to be a big thing. There are groups and individuals all around 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 observe how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite 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.