Boyds Logistics

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, the bad buying habit is junk food. EASILY had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets over time, I may have 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 accomplish.

Here in hawaii of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket came out in 1975, and they have 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 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 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 sort of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on one ticket, but heck as the saying goes, “If you don’t play, you can’t win !”, it was 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 moment lottery is pre-determined months before it’s release. The tickets were created and printed, they are distributed to the lottery retailers through the entire 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 as low as $1 so when high as $20 each 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 greatly help fund many different programs. For example in Pennsylvania, the lottery is used to generate funds to benefit programs for the Commonwealth’s older residents. In Ohio, since 1974, the Lottery has provided a lot 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 would go to retailers in the form of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In all, more than 93 cents of each dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for each and every state, but the lottery is very beneficial regardless of 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 time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you’re throwing money away ? Yes, there are literally hundreds if not a large number of folks around the world that would love to buy your tickets from you. I have seen losing lottery tickets sell for as high as $15 each, these 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 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 which 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 look 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 on a regular basis. 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 learning to be a big thing. There are groups and individuals all over the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are numerous websites, discussion groups and forums now just 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 observe how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite internet search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And live sdy could find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.