Thought I would share my experience with buying whole packs of tickets with my friends. First off, my friends and I thought long and hard before we finally took the plunge and bought a pack of $5 tickets (60 in a pack) for $300. The three of us put in $100 each and settled in for a night of some beers, music (we are products of the 70s), and our imposing stack, dead middle of the table, lucky tokens, and what-nots in place. We chose the Aces ticket for our thrill ride. Ticket #000--nothing. Ticket #001--we won $500! Needless to say, we were hooked. Got our money back and then some. The rest of the pack were incidental winners: some $5s, $10s, etc. In all, we won $640.
Well, we have done this around 10 times now. The pack noted above was the most we have won in a pack, however. If a pattern can be noted with the relatively small amount of times we tried, it is that there are COLD PACKS and HOT PACKS, some lukewarm. We tried the Aces again and only won $140, so there is a BASE PACK of $140 with the Aces. The individual $500 on the initial pack of tickets made it a HOT PACK (lukewarm?) We tried the Price is Right $5 tickets, getting COLD PACKS, and their base seems to be $175 with only small wins in our pack. I still think the seasonals are or should be the best tickets, like Mother's Day, Halloween, etc. I do better buying them one at a time, however.
Also, rather discouraging, is the fact that we have found that 11 (yes, 11) tickets in a row may be losing tickets. On the other hand, we have had 3 tickets in a row win. Go figure! Our experience with the $5 packs, on average, is that between 14 and 18 tickets will win out of the 60. We've tried the $2 packs, Sweet Winnings, (150 tickets in a pack for $300), and the average is about 30 to 32 tickets win. We won $200 on that pack, so half of our money back plus #8 was $50. I keep track of all the winning tickets in a Steelers (yeah!!!) notebook. Would love to try the $10 and $20 packs some day, but that is $600! The $20 packs only have 30 tickets, so if my averages are right, you would at least make back around $300 and the hopes of winning REAL big!
So, a night out with good friends, with the pleasure center of your brain on high alert, I would say is worth it. I suppose you have to realize that at the worst you spent $50 to $60 (if you don't get a HOT PACK) for a night out. We don't go to the bars anymore with the looming threat of a DUI, so we stay in and have a blast (when we win!). We are just your average Joes and Janes. None of us make over $30,000 a year. We work hard and feel we deserve to spend $100 (sometimes we save up winning tickets to buy the pack). It can't just be bills, bills, bills, and responsibility.
Thanks for listening. Glad I found this forum to converse with all you lottery dreamers. Funny, but you can't just tell everybody about your guilty pleasures, huh?