Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at once or another. For some folks it’s probably something they do all too often. I guess for me personally, the bad buying habit is junk food. EASILY had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets through the years, I may have 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 do.
Here in the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the initial scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have been a large hit every since.
I have 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 purchase 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 believe that with needing 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 kind 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 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 sure, “yes, some people do win it big.”
Unlike the live lottery that’s usually drawn by picking numbers, the instant 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. Prediksi HK 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 even more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to 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 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 spent on the Lottery benefits education programs; 61.6 cents dates back to players as prizes, 5 cents can be used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents would go 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 each state, but the lottery is quite beneficial regardless of 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 really win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know that every 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 purchase your tickets from you. I have seen losing lottery tickets sell for as high as $15 each, we were holding tickets that had no redeemable value. I once went to a local convenience store and asked them if I could have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw that they had on 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 remaining 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. You can find folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay continuously. 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 becoming a big thing. There are groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are many websites, discussion groups and forums now simply for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is a good new term or name for an instant lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the moment lottery ticket collecting hobby is called: LOTOLOGY. To observe how big this hobby is now just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you can find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.