Eh, winning is hit or miss in South Carolina, at least that's been my experience. There's been times where I hit something decent (I've already hit $500, $200 and a few $100 wins on scratchers this year) and times where the cards were just complete let downs. I don't think South Carolina tickets have better odds than Georgia, however. It was South Carolina odds that made me go to Georgia to start buying tickets in the first place. I was putting all this money in and never hit anything over $500 and this was me playing I guess you can say hardcore (for me that's about $50 - $60 weekly).
It only took me playing a year and a half sporadically on Georgia Lottery scratchers before I hit my first 1K. I've been playing the SC lottery scratchers since it's inception and I yet to sniff anything close to that. Truth be told if I lived closer to the Georgia border I would definitely play them over SC tickets.
In any case, I'm not sure if they got new vendors or not. I thought they still use the same vendor based out of Alpharetta, GA. I believe other state lotteries use the same vendor.
The main issue I have with the South Carolina lottery is when it comes to their second chance games Clean Sweep and Instant Replay. My issue with both games are the same, the same dag-gum people are winning all the dag-gum time. With Instant Replay, there's one guy who has won 20,000 points each month for almost the past 8 months since the game started. Either that guy buys tons and tons of $1 and $2 tickets or he's extremely lucky.
With Clean Sweep some people are just making bank on those $50 prizes and yet SCEL doesn't put a cap on it. If you look at the winners for any particular month, you'll see someone winning 6, 7, 8 or even 9 times in the monthly drawing. That's one person raking in between $300 and $500 off of $50 wins! The last Clean Sweep I entered I submitted 87 entries (that's 870 losing tickets that I collected from my purchases in a 10 - 12 month span). I didn't win not one $50 prize but yet someone who I bet didn't buy all those losing tickets he submitted scored $350 off of it.
It makes me sick and I've already voice my opinion to SCEL about and they won't do anything.
Anyway sorry to go off on tangent. As far as the looks of the tickets, I'm not really bothered by that. I just wish the use the material they used on the Million Dollar Series tickets for future scratchers. That stuff was so easy to scratch off. The only time I had an easier time scratching a ticket was when I played Georgia's Maximum Fortune (looks similar to our Ultimate Bankroll ticket out several months ago).
I will say it seems all of the big wins in South Carolina seem to come from the upstate so you're in a good position. Me I'm in central South Carolina and it seems like top prizes are rarely won here.