Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is a thing that almost everyone has done at one time or another. For a few folks it’s probably something they do too often. I guess for me personally, 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, whether it’s 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 first scratch off ticket came out in 1975, and they have been a big hit every since.

I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of each available price range in my own state. I usually choose the $1 – $2 tickets, but once in awhile 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, in order that was like throwing out my $20. You would think that with having to spend that much money, they might give everyone at least a FREE $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, “If you don’t play, you can’t win !”, it had been a gamble, and I didn’t win that time. I’ve known two individuals who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. THEREFORE I can say for certain, “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 ahead of it’s release. The tickets were created and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers throughout the state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, along with the large chain stores. You can usually see them in a vending machine with multiple styles and price ranges 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 in most states of the U.S. however, many states could have tickets that sell for a lot more than $20 each.

States do instant lotteries to 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 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 would go to retailers in the form of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In every, more than 93 cents of each dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for each and every state, but the lottery is very beneficial despite 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 time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you’re throwing money away ? Yes, you can find literally hundreds if not thousands of folks around the world that would love to purchase your tickets from you. Live Sdy have seen losing lottery tickets sell for as high as $15 each, we were holding 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 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 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 check 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 constantly. I just did a search now while writing this 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 around 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 search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And you will find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.