Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at one time or another. For a few folks it’s probably something they do too often. I guess for me, the bad buying habit is junk food. If I had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets over the years, I may have 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 accomplish.
Here in the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the initial scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have 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 one 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 out 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 they say, “Unless you 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 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, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers throughout the state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, and also 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 as low as $1 and as high as $20 each generally in most states of the U.S. however, many states may 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 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 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 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 every state, but the lottery is quite beneficial regardless of the few problems it can 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 each 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 could 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 may have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw that they had on to the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them if you ask me, I took the tickets home and after checking through them all, I found two that were $1 winners that 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 look 1 day and I noticed there is 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 on a regular basis. 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.
toto macau collecting is fast learning to be a big thing. You can find groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are several websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is even a new term or name for an instant lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the moment lottery ticket collecting hobby is named: LOTOLOGY. To observe how big this hobby is now just visit your favorite internet search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you will find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.