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 all too often. I guess for me, the bad buying habit is junk food. EASILY had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets over the years, I may have already been rich by now instead of overweight. Like anything, be it food or gambling one should do it in moderation, which 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 large 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 from time to time I buy a $5 – $10 ticket, and something 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 think 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 sort of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on 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 time. I have 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 is usually drawn by picking numbers, the moment lottery is pre-determined months ahead of it’s release. The tickets were created and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers through the entire state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, plus 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 and as 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 pengeluaran sgp 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 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 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 very beneficial regardless of the few problems it could 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, you can find literally hundreds if not a large number 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, they were 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 to the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them to me, I took the tickets home and after checking through them all, I found two that were $1 winners which 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 check 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 constantly. I just 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 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 simply for lottery ticket collecting. Actually there is a good new term or name for an instantaneous lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the moment lottery ticket collecting hobby is named: LOTOLOGY. To see how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you can find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.