I stopped at the White Hen Pantry on my way home last night to pick up some coffee cream, and as I was getting out of my car I couldn’t help but notice the driver in the station wagon to my right, a woman 
in her mid-50s with salt and pepper hair and a slight frame.
She didn’t seem to notice or care that the cold fluorescent light from inside the store betrayed her privacy as she sat hunched over her steering wheel and scratched away at an instant win lottery ticket.
Inside the store I noticed another aspiring instant winner, this one an overweight, balding 30-something man sitting at one of the window tables, working through a scroll of scratch tickets.
When I got back to my car the woman in the station wagon was rifling through the change pocket of her wallet, presumably looking for enough coins to go back in and buy another ticket.
And to my left as I backed out of my parking space I noticed a man in a shabby pickup scratching away at a ticket.
Surrounded by aspiring instant winners I wondered how many of these people ever actually win anything.
The Mass. State Lottery tallies the winners of all of its offerings at Masslottery.com.
Here are the numbers of instant winners of prizes under $1M as of last week (it’s not clear whether these are annual or all-time totals):
I doubt that many would-be or frequent scratch ticket-buyers regularly scan this website, but I’d bet that a substantial number of the buyers have won something, even if it was only $1.00, a prize that’s hard to resist using for anything besides buying another ticket, considering that the odds of winning (also available on Masslottery.com) aren’t that steep.
For example the new $1 ticket “7 Come 11 2010″ has a prize structure based on the sale of approximately 25,200,000 tickets. For a $100 prize the odds are one in 4,000, but there are 6,300 winners per game.
These shots at instant wealth come cheap, too. Even though every penny counts these days, a dollar isn’t that much to part with for a dose of hope.
But I saw a paradoxical mix of hope and despair on the faces of those White Hen Pantry patrons. All three of them looked overdrawn, and in that state the fact that everyone has a slight chance of winning can be intoxicating.
Here are some statistics from the website for National Problem Gambling Awareness Week, which is coming up in early March:
- 85% of US adults have gambled at least once in their lives.
- Consumers spend more on legal gaming in the U.S. than most other forms of entertainment combined (1998 Gross Annual Wager Report, 1999)
- Since 1975, the proportion of adults who “never gambled” dropped from 1 in 3 to 1 in 7.
- In 1999 the National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimated the annual cost to society of problem gambling was $5 billion.
- During fiscal year 2002, U.S. lottery sales totaled $42.4 billion; per capita sales were $168 (NASPL, 2003)
And these numbers are dated – imagine what they’re up to now, in the midst of the worst recession in decades. I know these aren’t new or surprising facts and observations, but the scene at that store made me stop and think, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of those people.
I’ve scratched a handful of winners in my day, and I remember the fleeting sparkle of hope, the tiny burst in my chest as that tantalizing metallic gray coating gave way to a second 9, and then a third! It always took a lot of will power to take what I won and walk, which I haven’t always done.
At this same White Hen Pantry my boyfriend recently bought me a $1 scratch ticket as an inside joke to cheer me up. I won $1 and, feeling high on hope, I convinced him to go back into the store and use the winning ticket to buy another.
When he came back he made me promise not to scratch the new ticket that night, lest I go back to being sad. Good move because I didn’t win anything as I learned a week later when I found the ticket in my wallet.
By the way, while researching this post I learned that this weekend Massachusetts becomes the latest of dozens of states (and the last of the New England states) to start selling Powerball tickets. That popular lottery’s website says the odds of winning its grand prize are 1 in 195,249,054.
You can also read the stories of past Powerball winners on the site, including cattle rancher Neal Wanless of rural Mission, South Dakota, who won $88,504,147.00 after taxes last year. He bought a ticket while on a supply run 35 miles from his ranch in a town called Winner.
