Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at once or another. For some folks it’s probably something they do too often. I guess for me, the bad buying habit is junk food. EASILY had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets over time, I may have already been rich by now rather than overweight. Like anything, whether it’s food or gambling one should do it in moderation, which is often not easy to do.
Here in the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket came out in 1975, and they have already been a large hit every since.
I have bought instant lottery tickets of each available price range in my own state. I usually buy 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 even $1 or a FREE ticket, in order 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 kind of foolish for spending and losing the $20 using one ticket, but heck as the saying goes, “Unless you play, you can’t win !”, it was a gamble, and I didn’t win that time. I’ve 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 moment lottery is pre-determined months before it’s release. The tickets were created and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers throughout the 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 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 so when high as $20 each 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 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 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 every dollar spent on 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 every dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for each and every state, but the lottery is quite beneficial despite 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 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, you can find 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, they were tickets that had no redeemable value. I once 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 if you ask me, I took the tickets home and after checking through all of them, 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 likely to throw them away.
Where did I sell them ? On Live Sgp . I happened to check 1 day and I noticed there was losing instant lottery tickets on the market on the eBay auction website. There are folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay constantly. 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 becoming a big thing. There are groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are many websites, discussion groups and forums now simply 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 internet search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you could find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.
