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 junk food. If I had spent my extra cash 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 must do it in moderation, which is often not easy to accomplish.
Here in the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket came out in 1975, and they have already been a big hit every since.
I have bought instant lottery tickets of every available price range in my state. I usually buy the $1 – $2 tickets, but once in awhile I purchase 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, in order 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 $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. So I can say for sure, “yes, some folks do win it big.”
Unlike the live lottery that is usually drawn by picking numbers, the instant lottery is pre-determined months ahead of 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, plus the large chain stores. You can usually see them in a vending machine with multiple styles and prices 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 in most states of the U.S. but some states may have tickets that sell for even more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to greatly help fund many different programs. For example in Pennsylvania, the lottery can be used to generate funds to benefit programs for the Commonwealth’s older residents. In keluaran sgp , 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 every dollar allocated to the Lottery benefits education programs; 61.6 cents goes back to players as prizes, 5 cents can be 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 state, but the lottery is very beneficial despite 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, you can find literally hundreds if not thousands of folks around the world that could love to buy 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 visited a local convenience store and asked them easily could 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 to me, I took the tickets home and after checking through them all, I found two which were $1 winners which 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 one 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 all the time. I just 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 ? Collectors.
Instant Lottery Ticket collecting is fast learning to be a big thing. There are groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are plenty of 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 see how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And you may find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.