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 junk food. If I had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets over the years, I may have already 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 do.
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 buy the $1 – $2 tickets, but once in awhile I purchase a $5 – $10 ticket, and something time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not $1 or a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing away my $20. You would think that with having 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, “If you don’t 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. THEREFORE I can say for sure, “yes, some people do win it big.”
Unlike the live lottery that’s usually drawn by picking numbers, the instant lottery is pre-determined months before 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, plus 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 only $1 so when 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 example 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 a lot more than $13 billion to public education. Annually, the lottery provides about 4.5 percent of the funding needed 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 would go 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 and every state, but the lottery is quite beneficial regardless of 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 that each and every time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you’re throwing money away ? Yes, there are 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, we were holding tickets that had no redeemable value. I once visited a local convenience store and asked them if I may have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw they had on the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them if you ask 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 check one day and I noticed there is losing instant lottery tickets on the market on the eBay auction website. You can find folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay continuously. I just 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 lottosod and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are numerous 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 instant lottery ticket collecting hobby is called: LOTOLOGY. To see how big this hobby is now just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And you can find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.
