Instant Lottery Tickets — How to make Money With Losing Lottery Tickets.

Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something which almost everyone has done at one time or another. For some people it’s probably something they do too often. I guess for me, the bad buying habit is junk food. If I had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets over the years, I might have been rich by now as opposed to overweight. Like anything, whether it’s food or gambling one need to do it in moderation, and that is often not easy to do.

In their state of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket came out in 1975, and they’ve been a large hit every since.

I have obtained instant lottery tickets of every available price range in my own state. I usually purchase 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 really $1 or a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing away my $20. You would believe that with having to invest that much money, they would give everyone at the very least a FREE $1 ticket or something. I believed afterwards that I was type of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on a single ticket, but heck as they say, “In the event that you don’t play, you can’t win !”, it was a risk, and I didn’t win that time. I have known two folks who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. So I could say for sure, “yes, some people do win it big.”

Unlike the live lottery that is usually drawn by picking numbers, the instant lottery is pre-determined months in front of it’s release. The tickets are designed and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers through the state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, along with the large chain stores. You can usually find them in a vending machine with multiple styles and price tags to select 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 and as high as $20 each in most states of the U.S. however, many states might have tickets that sell for only more than $20 each.luckybet678

States do instant lotteries to simply help fund a variety of programs. For instance in Pennsylvania, the lottery is employed 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 dates back to players as prizes, 5 cents is useful for administrative costs and 6.1 cents goes to retailers in the proper execution of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In most, more than 93 cents of every dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for every state, nevertheless the lottery is quite beneficial regardless of the few problems it may cause to some, in the proper execution of gambling addictions.

Most folks buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and should they don’t win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you realize 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 a large number of folks around the globe that will love to get 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 went along to an area convenience store and asked them if I possibly could have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw they’d on the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them in my experience, 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 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 appear 1 day and I noticed there is losing instant lottery tickets available on the eBay auction website. There are folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay all of the time. I recently did a research now while writing this 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 around the globe, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are many websites, discussion groups and forums now simply for lottery ticket collecting. In reality there’s even a brand new term or term for an immediate lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the instant lottery ticket collecting hobby is known as: LOTOLOGY. To see how large this hobby is becoming just visit your preferred search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you will find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.

Winning the Lottery: The First National Lottery

In the middle 18th century, a significant event occurred in France. Due to the possibility of fixing the outcome in privately operated lotteries, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725 – 1798) persuaded Louis XV of France to found the first state-owned monopoly lottery, the Loterie Royale of the Military School, which became the forerunner of the Loterie Nationale. Other lotteries in France were outlawed. The lottery was a Keno style game, where players could select 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 numbers between 1 and 90. (Incidentally, Casanova owned a pursuit in the brand new lottery and became wealthy consequently, but sold his interest shortly afterwards and lost the proceeds through unwise investments; sounds the same as some modern lottery winners, doesn’t it?)

Origin of American Lotteries

In the 18th century, lotteries were well under way in America, primarily to fund some venture or as a way out of debt. The first began in Massachusetts in 1744 because of military debts. The first national lottery was started by the Continental Congress in 1776 to improve funds for the American Revolution. The Founding Fathers were concerned not so much with how exactly to win the lottery but with how to improve funds using lotteries. Many of the Founding Fathers played and sponsored lotteries:

• Benjamin Franklin used lotteries to finance cannons for the Revolutionary War.
• Thomas Jefferson, who was $80,000 in debt at the conclusion of his life, used a lottery to dispose of most of his property. Winning this lottery would have given you a priceless bit of American heritage!
• John Hancock operated a lottery to finance the rebuild of historic Faneuil Hall in Boston.
• George Washington financed construction of the Mountain Road, which opened expansion West of Virginia, by operating a lottery.

Furthermore, public lotteries helped build several American universities, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Brown and Dartmouth. Winning these lotteries was a major contribution to the future of American education.