Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is a thing that almost everyone has done at once or another. For a few folks it’s probably something they do too often. I guess for me personally, the bad buying habit is processed foods. If I had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets through the years, I may have already been rich by now rather than overweight. Like anything, be it food or gambling one must 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 came out in 1975, and they have already been a big hit every since.
I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of each available price range in my own state. I usually choose the $1 – $2 tickets, but from time to time 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, so that was like throwing away my $20. You would believe with having to spend that much money, they might 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 using 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 point. I’ve known two individuals who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. So I can say for certain, “yes, some folks 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 are designed and printed, then 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 price ranges 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 and as high as $20 each generally in most states of the U.S. however, many states may have tickets that sell for even more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to help fund many different programs. For instance in Pennsylvania, the lottery can be 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 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 by means of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In all, more than 93 cents of every dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for 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 win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know every time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you are throwing money away ? Yes, there are literally hundreds if not a large number of folks around the world that could 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. I once visited an area 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 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 likely to throw them away.
Where did I sell them ? On eBay. I happened to check 1 day and I noticed there is losing instant lottery tickets for sale on the eBay auction website. There are keluaran sgp selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay all the time. I simply did a search now while writing this short 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. You can find groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are plenty of websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is even a new term or name for an instantaneous 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 execute a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And you could find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.