Below is an interactive map of Scratch Ticket Winners during 2012 for California, showing all retailers with top prizes 5 figures and higher. (there's too much data to map it all at once) This represents about 1/20th of all retailers in the state, the lucky few stores with any significant top prizes in a given year.
Following that is a map just of Los Angeles area, showing stores that have any prizes above $600 for the year 2012. Overall, only about half the retailers will see any large prizes above $600 in a year, with most having just one or two. That is the reality of your chances of getting a decent sized scratch winner at a store in any given year.
CA Top Prizes 2012: http://batchgeo.com/map/10176ff6a158d48b16d6c9fdf5ce6be8
Los Angeles 2012: http://batchgeo.com/map/79f7d0149b571672334b2ddee298ad43
Didn't find anything fishy like last year, where that one store in San Jose FAMILY WASH & DRY had 3 top prizes of $2,000,000 for Set for Life game. This year that store only had 4 prizes for less than $4000 total. Guess that $6,000,000 family retired and moved away.
And in Los Angeles the store with top number of prizes was once again LUONG HAO DRINKING WATER in Lincoln Heights, a place that apparently sells ... water ... and where old asian men go to play scratchers all day long. Last year it beat SS MART in East Hollywood by a wide margin, but this year it only beat it by 1 prize with a total of 24 prizes claimed there.
If anyone else has Scratch Maps for other states, would be very curious to see and compare.