Do you search out and check discarded lottery tickets?

Reply #36

BT3100 — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 18:01:11 GMT

I often wonder what the percentage of non-claimed winners must be. I have to think it would be at least 5% of all tickets.

Reply #35

lottojim — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 20:35:55 GMT

YES!!! I will usually find a winner between $5 - $50 every 3 months. I use the non-winners for our rewards program.

Reply #34

TheOtherOne — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 02:32:54 GMT

Used to be able to do this all the time. For me , it seems when the scandalous case hit the news around 3 or 4 years ago about involving the lady who would take scratchers from a store where a $1Million ticket was left, after that there were no scratchers to be found, let alone discarded winners.

Good luck on your findings

Reply #33

Big Joey — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 02:21:48 GMT

The barcode to cash it, was not scratched off.

Reply #32

Pocono Player — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 19:50:39 GMT

Cool Win Big Joey The TASL (Take a Second Look) methods hits paydirt. Keep looking down.

Sometimes even the obvious win all messages get overlooked. In other instances people know a ticket is a winner but somehow still manage to discard it before cashing the ticket.

Today my find was a $2 ticket not even played. I will determine if it is a winner once I check a stack of discards today.

Reply #31

Big Joey — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 22:18:24 GMT

I found this laying in the parking lot at my grocery store. A $15.00 winner. Someone either dropped it, or didn't realize it was a winner, or was confused by the single cash symbol. I always stop to look at discarded tickets I see.

Reply #30

Pocono Player — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 02:36:51 GMT

I had a quiet Sunday afternoon of running errands and pursuing my hobby of gathering up discarded lottery tickets at convenience stores along my route.

So far today 233 discarded tickets have produced 6 winners totaling $35. I still have about 150 to check including $10, $20 and $30 tickets with their better potential.

My total using the Take a Second Look method is now just over $3,000 since Memorial Day 2018.

Reply #29

Soledad — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 10:00:13 GMT

Well I have to say, congrats on your persistence as well as your perseverance. That s no small change and every little bit indeed does help. I got a kick out of reading this, as I have heard stories from some people and seen people do this. I was in a little pharmacy waiting with nothing to do, and I saw a little lined plastic garbage can sitting on the floor. It had mostly scratchers and an empty bottle of water. So I grabbed the handful of scratchers and started scanning them. As I said I had

Reply #28

CDanaT — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 15:08:13 GMT

Out at my favorite lil country store this past week,where I get a majority of my tickets. I asked the gal if she had any losing scratch tickets and she must have had 100 of them. So I take the pile home and enter them in the 2nd chance drawings. Going down through them, I find one that had not scratched the bar code off. I can see that the winning numbers matched one of the other numbers....a quick check...$5 WINNER

Reply #27

TheMeatman2005 — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 15:45:01 GMT

It's a 100% total profit since Pocono Player invested $0 in purchasing the tickets he collected $2,585 on

Reply #26

Synbios — Sat, 12 Jan 2019 23:05:27 GMT

Ah man...you can say this again, lol. Well to be fair there is a pattern to an extent, but it's so complex it's close to impossible to ever come up with a way to form a strategy to win more than you lose.

I have a Phd in studying scratcher odds and roughly figuring what's guaranteed to be and not be in a roll...and while I'm spot on for the most part, I still fare no better than those that blindly buy tickets. Mostly because I play 10 times more tickets than a casual player does which ge... [ More ]

Reply #25

DELotteryPlyr — Sat, 12 Jan 2019 12:04:36 GMT

NICE PROFIT!!!!

So I was at my local store and there was a lady with about 100 or so old losing tickets she had bought. She was double checking them. Says she keeps all her losers then after a few weeks she double checks them. She found a $10 winner while I was there - LOL

Reply #24

Pocono Player — Tue, 25 Dec 2018 20:55:56 GMT

Take A Second Look (TASL) update for Christmas.

Current total for discarded winning tickets since Memorial Day 2018 is now $2,585.

Pennsylvania's bingo and crossword games prove the most productive. Those requiring only a simple visual match, i.e. finding a snowman, goat or wad of money, are only missed by the hastiest (or most inebriated) scratchers. Inexplicably, some playing scratch off games don't even recognize the Win All symbols for what they are. Missed single number matches rema... [ More ]

Reply #23

BT3100 — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 14:27:55 GMT

It's not a bad strategy if you have time. In PA the app allows you to check tickets at home. IF you find a stack of unscratched codes on tickets it makes sense to take em home.

I was at WAWA the other night and saw a $20 game that was on the edge of the trash can with the bar code unscratched. What the hell, scratched it and it was a $20 winner. It happens.

Reply #22

TheMeatman2005 — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 13:31:05 GMT

If you Google Jesus Leonardo, stooper, you will read about a man that made his living stooping or checking tickets he found in the trash. Picking (Up) Winners Without Placing a Bet

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Reply #21

Pocono Player — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:54:08 GMT

Thanks CDanaT. Its fun but obsessive. After double checking a 100 or so discards and finding no overlooked winners I just have to find more tickets to check. When I do finally find a winner the Lottery App in Pennsylvania provides a satisfying winning screen complete with falling confetti.

Reply #20

CDanaT — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:26:31 GMT

Pocono.... that's not bad results for taking a few seconds per ticket to scan or visually observe

Reply #19

Pocono Player — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:08:19 GMT

Well played TMM!

My experience with $30 discarded tickets since May 2018 is 6 winners. All were missed single number matches. 4 of the 6 were $30 wins, 1 was $40 and 1 was for $200. It is likely I have examined about 700 discarded $30 tickets since May. Perhaps 1% of such discarded tickets are winners that players threw away too hastily.

Reply #18

TheMeatman2005 — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 13:11:21 GMT

It was just one of the winning number matches. Apparently they missed it while checking the exposed numbers against the winning ones.

Reply #17

CDanaT — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 13:25:28 GMT

That was a great find TMM !!! Nothing better than finding free money.Congrats on that one. Did you ever see where exactly the purchaser had missed on that ticket ? I have yet to find something that fruitful on checking other discarded tickets but I will enter the losing numbers off a larger scratchers in our states VIP drawings. One never knows

Reply #16

TheMeatman2005 — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 12:06:26 GMT

Last week I went into a store to buy my Take5 and Pick10 tickets for that night's draw. On the self-service machine was a $30 scratcher that had been scratched but still had the bar code uncovered. I scratched to reveal the bar code and checked it. It was a $75 winner. Whoo hoo

Reply #15

oate — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 06:44:13 GMT

Smart. Sure beats number crunching and futile searches for non-existent patterns.

Reply #14

Pocono Player — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 02:29:13 GMT

Update - October 6, 2018

Current total for discarded lottery tickets winnings now $1,922. At least one winning ticket for the last six days.

Reply #13

Pocono Player — Sat, 06 Oct 2018 02:01:47 GMT

Update - October 5, 2018

Current total for discarded lottery tickets winnings now $1,668.

Even on a slack day I am building up a formidable number of entries for Pennsylvania's second chance drawing.

Reply #12

Pocono Player — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 19:15:06 GMT

Yesterday I grabbed about 20 discarded tickets with the bar code scatched off in addition to the usual haul of intact bar codes. I checked along with others that had been discarded but where the bar code was still intact. It turned out that one was a $20 winner. This is about the seventh time I have found a winner where the bar code had been scratched off.

All told I find that about 1 in 100 of the discarded tickets with intact bar codes are winning tickets. Around 1 in 500 of the discarded t... [ More ]

Reply #11

Sarge0202 — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 18:52:48 GMT

I looked in the trash can next to a lotto vending machine, today. All the ones I saw had the bar code scratched off. Means, they were already scanned by the user at the machine. Here in Illinois, every lottery locations has scanners for players, so it will probably be difficult to find unscanned tickets. But then again if I see any tickets without the bar code scratched, I will probably check them.

Reply #10

GetReal720 — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 06:22:33 GMT

I have found one or two winners lying on the ground though, and I'll always pick up one I find laying in the street or a parking lot or something like that. Even non scratch lottery tickets. I found a lottery machine that had $10 left on it, someone must have forgot to play all of their money. This was probably 3-4 years ago. I bought a $10 ticket and hit $100 on it. Money found turned into even more money found

Reply #9

GetReal720 — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 06:20:47 GMT

I've occasionally looked at the top of the bin, just to see what was bought and thrown away lately.

I almost never take tickets back out, unless it's a bin in a location where that bin doesn't really get regular garbage thrown in it.

The best place around me I can think to do that, is a local beer distributor but I actually witnessed them telling someone not to

take tickets out of the bin after they have been thrown away. They do not permit it. I haven't really found anywhere else... [ More ]

Reply #8

gatorsrok — Sun, 16 Sep 2018 18:48:22 GMT

At least in Florida, about 5% of prizes at all levels are thrown away by players who either do not double check their ticket or just don't care. The most commonly missed wins are the single number match for a prize. It is a windfall for the lottery.

Reply #7

Soledad — Sun, 16 Sep 2018 17:14:12 GMT

I ve seen many do that. I knew a lady who used to do that. She used to hang in the store, she played also, but she would watch all the people play in the store and watch them throw the tickets out then she would take them. She said sometimes she would find winners, like this here that there. A lot of people don t know how to play, or whether they win or not. Believe it or not. On the scratch offs here in NY they have a three letter code on the scratch off ticket. FIV, TEN, FHV, ANZ, PAZ, FMZ, HU... [ More ]

Reply #6

Pocono Player — Sun, 16 Sep 2018 16:51:26 GMT

Update: I checked 420 discarded scratch off tickets on (Friday, Sept 14). Friday seems to be the prime day for lottery scratch off purchases.

4 winners resulted ($5, $10, $10 and $10).

New total from discarded tickets since Memorial Day 2018 is $1,501.

Reply #5

Pocono Player — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 19:43:05 GMT

Update: Checked about 175 discarded tickets on September 7th. One $2 free ticket and a $15 Winner.

Reply #4

wander73 — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:28:49 GMT

One persons trash is another persons treasures. Good for you then.

Reply #3

Artist77 — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:18:20 GMT

Great thread. I just started a few weeks ago looking for discarded tickets at my grocery store. Today I found 3 tickets with $5, $5 and $10. I was only taking the ones out of a small waste can near a lottery machine and with the 2nd chance logo to enter them. Since I never play scratchers, does this mean the scratchers were not cashed in? Do they keep the scratchers after you cash them in? I only play mm and pb.I never buy scratchers.

Reply #2

BigJonStud — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 02:30:59 GMT

I snag discared winners all the time up here in NY, 10's 20's 50's and 100 last year. I've pulled discarded winning tickets from the 2nd chance drawing bin that our local grocery store has...LMAO this one really gets me.

Reply #1

Pocono Player — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 21:55:48 GMT

Update - Checked 70 discarded tickets today and came away with one winner. $20 winner on Pennsylvania Bonus Star Millions

Do you search out and check discarded lottery tickets?

Pocono Player — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 19:34:57 GMT

I started checking discarded lottery tickets in late May when I chanced upon a discarded ticket at a grocery store that appeared to have a $5 bonus. The machine at the service desk showed it to be a $5 winner. Later that day I found a $2 winner and within a week I had a $50 winner.

Since my daily routine takes me past 7 convenience stores, I now stop in and check the discard bins next to scratch off game vending machines or at the kiosks where people scratch off their tickets.

I've learned... [ More ]