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July 5, 2018
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Idaho has the best rate of return for any scratch-off set of games in the nation. Currently, there is a $10 ticket called Blazin Bingo that is 99.62% sold out with a single $100,000.00 top prize out there. My rough back-of-the-envelope math says that there are 1500ish tickets left out of 406,670 total tickets. I don't generally play scratchers till they are 97% sold out and in this case, I waited till they were 97.5% sold out. Now that being said I did take a couple of days off and drove around the state tracking and buying these. I am astounded that the last 100K ticket has not been found and honestly am beginning to believe the last ticket may have been accidentally tossed after being scanned by a notoriously inaccurate phone scanner.
Also I have taken to calling every retailer by county and NO ONE has these last 1500 tickets in stock I have taken to daily screen-shotting the remaining prizes and they are barely moving.
So my question is in a situation like this what is to keep unscrupulous retailers from sitting on these final packs?
United States
Member #197,030
March 28, 2019
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It's entirely possible that the last high dollar prize ticket was already purchased and for whatever reason hasn't been claimed yet. Idaho Lottery only has one physical location in the whole state, in Boise. If the winning ticket was purchased by someone living far away from HQ, then maybe they just put the ticket in a safe place and plan to claim it when they have time to drive all the way out to Boise. It's a similar situation in California. We have 10 claim centers, but they're not evenly spread out around the state, most are either around the Bay Area or LA area. Not convenient if you live in the Central Valley or NorCal. And nobody trusts the mail these days, LOL.
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September 25, 2014
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One big reason that I don't play games with 1 remaining top prize left.. could have been tossed, could have been purchased but the winner is waiting to claim for whatever reason. I have been leaning towards the fast play games in Pennsylvania. There is no question if the jackpot ticket has been won because as soon as it is the top prize resets or the game ends.
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Member #190,861
July 5, 2018
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It's distinctly possible the top prize has been sold. I'm leaning toward the accidentally tossed scenario and this is why. There are two Idaho lottery phone scanning apps that are unreliable. I have had both of them scan a ticket as not a winner and then gone back to a retailer scanned them again and found $100 winners. The reason I started doing that was I have had more then one retailer tell me that the phone apps miss winners AS DO the little scanners available to the public at the counter! I just had that happen on Friday and the lady at the gas station told me "here let me double check those losers for ya" and we were having a discussion about the fact the phone app was possibly faulty. I said is t the counter scanner linked to the main scanner and she said "they miss winners all the time!" So over the weekend as I made a small tour of local retailers practically all of them agreed with this. 😳
Another high percentage sold $5 ticket just recently got closed out by the lottery becuse it was sitting at 99% sold and no one came forward with the winner. I have from time to time called and asked if anyone turned it in but the answer is no. Now I do know that the lottery commission is made aware if the winning ticket is scanned anywhere. Interestingly they will not admit to that when asked but I know someone who won a large prize and was told "the ticket was scanned on such and such date."
I am still however kinda stymied as to where the last 1500 tickets are as I have called all over Idaho finding none and the weekend prize count went down by 2 $30 prizes and one $50 prize... that's it.
So word to the wise in Idaho double check your losers at the counter.
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Member #192,037
September 3, 2018
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Quote: Originally posted by Lostson on Feb 27, 2023
It's distinctly possible the top prize has been sold. I'm leaning toward the accidentally tossed scenario and this is why. There are two Idaho lottery phone scanning apps that are unreliable. I have had both of them scan a ticket as not a winner and then gone back to a retailer scanned them again and found $100 winners. The reason I started doing that was I have had more then one retailer tell me that the phone apps miss winners AS DO the little scanners available to the public at the counter! I just had that happen on Friday and the lady at the gas station told me "here let me double check those losers for ya" and we were having a discussion about the fact the phone app was possibly faulty. I said is t the counter scanner linked to the main scanner and she said "they miss winners all the time!" So over the weekend as I made a small tour of local retailers practically all of them agreed with this. 😳
Another high percentage sold $5 ticket just recently got closed out by the lottery becuse it was sitting at 99% sold and no one came forward with the winner. I have from time to time called and asked if anyone turned it in but the answer is no. Now I do know that the lottery commission is made aware if the winning ticket is scanned anywhere. Interestingly they will not admit to that when asked but I know someone who won a large prize and was told "the ticket was scanned on such and such date."
I am still however kinda stymied as to where the last 1500 tickets are as I have called all over Idaho finding none and the weekend prize count went down by 2 $30 prizes and one $50 prize... that's it.
So word to the wise in Idaho double check your losers at the counter.
LS
Hi LS, when I read your initial post I originally thought the toss scenario was unlikely, esp as it's a crossword so with so many words hitting it would become very apparent to the player that they have a winning ticket. I did look at it on the Idaho Lottery website and saw there was a spot to match a symbol for a win and wondered if that could be involved, perhaps someone forgetting to scratch it or just missing the match.
Now that you mention the faulty scanning app and the retailer self serve scanners missing wins and essentially tending to report false negatives it's entirely plausible that the win was tossed, esp if it wasn't played as intended as just bar code scratched and scanned. I have plenty of gripes about the FL Lottery but have at least found the scanning capabilities to be reliable, both the app and little self serve retail scanners. Faulty scanning would be maddening, not only to the players but also the retailers (who universally celebrate self-scanning since it relieves folks clogging up the retail sales counters having employees scan losers at the terminals). I'd be tempted to try and video a false negative happening and send to the IG or some other watchdog org.
Also, as for the grand prize, there's a chance the ticket could have been destroyed. In FL if a retailer goes out of business all the partial books are returned and, from what I understand, destroyed. Also, major grocery chain stores here have their game planograms (and retail machines) directly managed by Scientific Games (the company that essentially manages the states lotto system). When new games come out existing games are bumped off the planogram and from machines, with partial books being returned (and destroyed). That's just part of the lotto business, but my issue is that it doesn't appear that the total winning ticket amounts are decremented accordingly. If Idaho operates the same way, the winning ticket could have been destroyed, but apparently reflected as still avail and giving everyone false hope hope that it's out there somewhere.
Either way, I highly doubt the last prize is out there somewhere and in a book so near the end of the game's run. You're best hope would be to come across a retailer with an book of this game somewhere 2/3s or so through the game's total book count.
Either way some of those games there in Idaho looked fun...vast majority of the ones here are all boring number match.