Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something 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, the bad buying habit is processed foods. If I had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets through the years, I may have been rich by now instead of overweight. Like anything, be it food or gambling one must do it in moderation, and that is often not easy to accomplish.
Here in hawaii of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have been a big hit every since.
I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of every available price range in my own state. I usually choose the $1 – $2 tickets, but from time to time I buy a $5 – $10 ticket, and one time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not even $1 or perhaps a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing away my $20. You would think that 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 the saying goes, “Unless you play, you can’t win !”, it had been a gamble, and I didn’t win that point. I have known two individuals who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. So I can say for sure, “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 before it’s release. The tickets were created and printed, 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 find 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 generally 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 greatly help fund many different programs. For instance 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 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 goes back to players as prizes, 5 cents is used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents goes to retailers by means 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 very beneficial despite 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 win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know each and 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. I once visited an area convenience store and asked them if I could have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw they had on to the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them to me, I took the tickets home and after checking through all of them, I found two which 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 look one day and I noticed there was losing instant lottery tickets for sale on the eBay auction website. There are folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay on a regular basis. I simply 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 ? live draw sydney .
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 several websites, discussion groups and forums now simply for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is even a 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 now just visit your favorite internet search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you can find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.