An abrupt end for collectors who turned lottery ticket trash into cash

[Ian David]

By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff | May 26, 2007

Peter Aliberti feels he was double-crossed by the lottery. It's not that the Everett construction worker had a winning ticket the state wouldn't cash. He's upset that he has collected 90,000 discarded scratch tickets, and he thinks he's due 3,600 new ones.

He's angry that in late April, the Massachusetts State Lottery abandoned its recycling program aimed at cleaning up the litter of discarded lottery tickets by giving away a free $1 scratch ticket for anyone turning in 25 losing stubs. He thinks the lottery owes him and others one more chance to redeem their tickets.

Lottery officials said its Instant Replay program, started nearly three years ago, spiraled out of control, costing the agency nearly $1 million a year in prize money -- or 10 times what the Legislature had appropriated for the lottery's antilitter efforts -- because people were redeeming discarded tickets by the truck load.

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Collectors say their winnings from a book of 300 scratch tickets would range from $150 to $225. The lottery says the prize payout on all its games averages 72 cents for every dollar gambled.

<snip>

On redemption days, Cavanagh said some people would show up driving dump trucks and pickups full of tickets. At one event at the Hatch Shell last year, Cavanagh said, the crunch of redemptions was so great that Storrow Drive had to be closed temporarily.

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/05/26/an_abrupt_end_for_collectors_who_turned_lottery_ticket_trash_into_cash/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+City%2FRegion+News

[cleveramerican]

1. I knew it would end

as soon as I saw the boy scouts collecting old lottery tickets as a fund raising device

[hughee99]

2. So they put a law into place to redeem loosing lottery tickets

as a way to clean up the litter from them, the program was (apparently) very successful, and now they're discontinuing it?

At the convenience store I frequent, there's a bin for losing tickets that the owner encourages people to use, and for those who buy lots and return the losers, he even gives out some free stuff (a couple of bucks here or there). I wonder how much it will cost them to clean up now that there's no incentive to do this anymore?

I'm not sure if this guy tried to redeem them before or after they discontinued the law, but if it was before, I agree with this guy, he got hosed.

Perhaps they would find it more effective to just up the ratio? Instead of 1 ticket for every 25 losing stubs, maybe 1 for every 50 or 100 losing stubs. That would save them a considerable amount of money on the redemption and still provide some incentive to clean up the tickets.