Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at one time 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. 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, be it food or gambling one should do it in moderation, which is often not easy to do.

Here in the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have already been a big hit every since.

I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of each available price range in my state. I usually choose the $1 – $2 tickets, but once in awhile 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 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 kind of foolish for spending and losing the $20 using one ticket, but heck as the saying goes, “Unless you 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 folks 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 are designed 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. It is possible to usually find 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 so when high as $20 each generally in most states of the U.S. however, many states could have tickets that sell for even more than $20 each.

States do instant lotteries to greatly help fund many different programs. For instance 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 necessary 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 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 state, but the lottery is quite beneficial regardless of the few problems it could cause to some, by means of gambling addictions.

Live Draw Singapore buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and if 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 are throwing money away ? Yes, you can find 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, they were tickets that had no redeemable value. I once visited a local convenience store and asked them easily 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 if you ask 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 going to throw them away.

Where did I sell them ? On eBay. I happened to look 1 day and I noticed there is losing instant lottery tickets for sale on the eBay auction website. There are 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 lots of websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is even a new term or name for an instantaneous lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the instant 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.