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May 10, 2007, 3:27 pm (21 comments)
Pundits who doubted the public's desire for $50 lottery tickets are silenced
Tickets to the Michigan Lottery's most expensive game sold out Wednesday after less than three days on sale.
The lottery's Super Raffle game includes 250,000 tickets sold at $50 each.
Tickets went on sale Monday. Winning tickets are scheduled to be drawn June 18.
Michigan Lottery commissioner Gary Peters said the public was responding to the game's relatively good odds, compared to other lottery games.
The ticket is pricier than other Michigan Lottery games, and the top prize is $2 million. Two ticket holders will win the top prize. Odds of winning are one in 125,000.
Twenty-five ticket holders will get $100,000 each, and 4,500 ticket holders will win $500 each.
Lottery Post Staff
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
$50 is WAAAAY too expensive for a lottery ticket.
I might spend $50 A WEEK, TOTAL for tickets, but all my eggs in one basket all at once is just too unappealing for me.
At these tickets' highest point, they were selling at a rate of over 8,000 PER HOUR!
With the way Michigan's economy is, this state's insatiable desire to get rich quick, and what is happening to this state, I wouldn't doubt a few people missed a payment on a bill to buy one of these. However, as history has shown, that apparently brings you good luck, as a lady from Detroit won $96M on MM by missing her gas bill payment to buy tickets.
Good luck to all who got their hands on one!
I agree,in my opinion it is too much for a top prize of 2 mil.I remember the woman from Detroit,the first thing she said she was going to do with her money was pay her gas bill. lol
I like the odds better ..25 people will win 100,000.00 Many are playing and hoping they hit the 2nd place prizes instead of the 1st or 3rd. I would buy it..
I do not agree with the sentiment that $50 is too much. In fact, the most popular lottery in the world is more expensive -- El Gordo.
$50 tickets are great for these infrequently-held drawings (i.e., special events).
In Spain (where El Gordo is held), the expensive tickets are actually broken into 10 parts called Decimas, so that people are able to buy 1-tenth of a ticket (and get 1-tenth of the prize if they win). So people can opt to either go all-in or part-in. What a great concept!
The expensive tickets are also a nice way to form a pool, with everyone rooting for their number to come in.
I would not be surprised if the tickets become MORE expensive, and the lotteries start offering partial tickets, just like El Gordo. Why mess with success?
I'm afraid TN will not be doing a raffle again anytime soon given the fact they can't even sell their $10 raffle tickets.
Wisconsin cant sell their 10 dollar ticket but Michigan sells 50 dollar tickets in three days. It is all about promotion. I went out of my way to get three of them and I like the fact my odds are 3333 to 1 to hit for 100k. It is only paper!
This was truly a hot ticket. I got one on the first day, about four hours after they went on sale. I was shocked that they had sold over 60,000 in under 5 hours. 50 bucks seemed like a lot, but when i looked at the odds of winning, I realized that you won't find better in any lottery game. I got my wife to chip in 25 bucks, and in what I am sure was repeated countless times across the state, we took the plunge.
You should have heard the groans from those people who waited too late and regretted it.
Nothing can change the shape of things to come!
IMHO I think there should be a law that on all Michigan tickets that are $30 dollars or more that they should have to advertise how many are going to lose.
Such as - Odds are 1 in 55 and 245473 out of 250000 tickets will *LOSE* $50 each.
I don't know how they can sell the fifty dollar tix but they think they cant offer a double jackpot for a dollar extra on the regular jackpot games. I'd pay the optional buck to go for the second jackpot.
If you check out the federal reserve inflatiorator, 1 buck when the Mich lottery started is about equal to 5 of todays dollars
Funny thing about this raffle - they did not spend one cent on advertising on TV OR Radio - it was word of mouth and internet advertising that got the word out, on top of all the Club Keno retailer monitors advetrtising it.
I realize that some people will spend anything on a chance to make themselves wealthy - I just see it as I, personally, would not spend that much money for such a small top prize. If the prize was larger, say $5M, I might go for it, but $20 seems enough for me.
Well, after saying last week that I would not spend over $20 for a ticket, my brother and I split the cost of the $50 raffle ticket.
You have a 1-56 chance of winning $500, so maybe I will win enough to buy 10 tickets in the next raffle.
I would buy a couple..
My buddy and I split the cost of 1 raffle ticket. We were each going to purchase one but then we thought, hmmmmmmmmm 50 bucks for one ticket (and chances are we're not going to win) so we split it. I think a lot people did this for the super raffle. Personally I think they should speed up the drawing time. I mean they sold out it 3 days they should conduct the drawing like 2 weeks after they sell out. JMO
I bought two of them for myself. The only one who missed that hundred dollars I spent on tickets is my girlfriend because I did not take her out on two dates. She will be a lot happier if I win some money. As far as the price goes, I do not think that it all that expensive. I might only spend $5 a draw for the mega millions but over the course of a month or two I would spend at least $50 for alot worse odds.
For those that think $2 powerball or Mega tickets aren't the future this doesn't bode well. Personally I haven't gotten above a $5 scratch but I rarely get scratch tickets.
I agree with Todd that a $50 ticket would be good for a pool. Personally I would never spend that much on a ticket just for myself. The feeling when a person wins must be really great. But losing $50 on one draw is just too much of a disappointment for me. It really comes down to a couple of things (a) if you have the extra money to spend in the first place and (b) your type of personality. Just like the stock market, you can win or lose and there's something I call a tummy factor. If your tummy can handle the losses and you can also shrug them off your shoulders, then there's always that chance you'll hang in long enough for a win.
I'm sure most people here have watched Deal or No Deal. I've seen people who turn down offers of over $100,000 only to walk away with $10. One week I watched part of a show that had a contestant who said she was displaced by Katrina. Yet she said No Deal to an very large offer. I turned off the set when all the big amounts were gone because I didn't want to watch the show any more. These people are nuts and I really wonder if it's staged. Nobody ever says Deal after the first couple of offers even when the odds are bad. It would make the show too boring. Anyway, I can't imagine knowing you have a sure $200,000 in your pocket and leaving with enough for a tank of gas.
hey I agree with the board that $50.00 is over the budjet
of the majority of lottery players;
But if you were part of an organized crime family and you wanted to get paid a portion of the millions that come into a state wide lottery and do it legaly then buy as many tickets as you can;
THINK if you spent $100 ,000 or $200,000 and you knew where to look for the best selection and was guarentted that someone was gonna win ....its not that hard to put down a large amount of money if you have inside information and help;
all computers are man-made and operated by people ;
there is an old saying _ WHITE GETS DIRTY EASY_ SO DO' PEOPLE WHO WORK AROUND ALL THIS MONEY were talking a billion dollars and thats just for one Raffel ticket sales ;
there are billions in other ticket sales as well ....don't think people have not figured out a way to baffel -the -brainless -public since none of this is by balls drawn but by computer its who the lottery say has won we have no control,;
look why don't they give these same odds to the faithfull general public on 1.00 and 2.00 ticket sales ;why are they only giving it to the high income middle-class ??????/
DOND really bugs me too. I think the main problem is people get greedy and turn down reasonable $$$ amounts because they'd rather have the million. Well, we'd all rather have the million, but ya gotta calculate the odds and play with your brain in gear.
Another problem is that after a contestant does take the deal, Howie makes them continue to open the suitcases and tells them what the offer would have been. I think future contestants watching that somehow think the contestant was dumb for not continuing to play. When in reality, the contestant was playing the odds and stopped when they knew they should. Maybe they could have gone home with more than they did, but had they gambled, they also could have gone home with a whole lot less. Some people just don't see that.
As of last night they still haven't sold all the tickets and the drawing is tomorrow.
they have about 24 hours to go according to the website so i guess they will sell them right up until the drawing monday so they may sell them out because they picked up alot this weekend i guess alot of people waited until this weekend or they recently saw the commercial ads. i put up my tickets on the other post but the last one i bought last night was #755772 so they have sold more than i thought they would. i dont care how many they sell as long as im one of the jackpot winners...
I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!!
thanks for the positive thinking i didnt win anything in the million madness raffle but i did win $100 on cash 4 monday night...