Lotovention 2007: The Government and Media Take Note - Part 2

By Arthur Rein, #635

I was in the lead car with Pat Fowler who was driving, giving her directions to the restaurant. However, in true New York driving fashion she ran several yellow lights and made a sharp turn into the restaurant shopping center just before we would miss the entrance causing much anguish for the drivers that followed. Once inside the restaurant John Flara asked whether I was doing the driving.

There were a total of ten of us in the restaurant, enjoying the food, and telling stories about the hobby and the club. After about an hour and a half it was time to go back to the hotel for more trading.

Later George Beilke, #699, and Stephen Tuday, #492, arrived as the trading went well into the night. Cyrella and I would eventually join Stephen Tuday and his wife, Lilly, for a late night snack at a diner before turning in for the night.

Saturday, July 21

I awoke early as I always do and headed toward the hotel restaurant which was serving breakfast. I met up with a few lotologists before the meeting room opened at 8am.

During the previous evening I had thought about going to a Staples store to get one of those accordion folders which would help me separate all the tickets that I thought I needed by state. My biggest fear was to come home with thousands of tickets and then waste an hour separating the tickets by state. If I had gotten the accordion folder I would be able to separate the tickets from the very beginning.

Of course, I was too eager to start trading and didn't go to Staples. It was early in the morning when Pat Fowler showed me about three dozen individual folders and wanted to know if I wanted them. You bet I did so I thanked her and titled each folder with a state name and fed each folder with a ticket that I thought I needed. This was great.

As more and more lotologists entered the room, Bill Pasquino and Stephen Gilbert handed out a bunch of goodies to everyone. Both Bill and Stephen had created goodie boxes from items in their massive collections to give to attending members. Along with those boxes guests received a tee shirt from the Georgia Lottery that Stephen Tuday picked up, the official Lotovention program, a name badge, as well as the goodie boxes that I had put together and a goodie bag that Stephen Tuday created. It was the biggest amount of stuff that Lotovention attending members ever received.

I was also given my pre-ordered commemorative tee shirt that Bill had created which had the GLCS logo on the front and the name of the event, date, and address of the Lotovention listed on the back.

Shortly thereafter, Renee White, #796, entered the room and handed out a yellow manila envelope full of Michigan scratched and sample void tickets to everyone present.

One collector in the room was selling a lot of mint tickets at face value in an effort to recoup some of the money that he has put into the hobby. As I looked at his tickets it became apparent that I needed a lot of those tickets. I joked that I was probably going to reimburse him for his airfare in getting to the Lotovention. I ended up buying many of the older holiday sets I needed as well as several Betty Boop and Star Wars tickets that were on my wantlist.

One collector displayed his lottery ticket crafts. There was a half gallon milk container covered with old instant scratchoff tickets, a round container covered with old instant scratch tickets, a container in the shape of a small school bus covered with old instant scratch tickets and a large box that had been decorated with old instant scratch tickets. This item had been set up inside several convenience stores to encourage customers to throw their losing scratch tickets into it for his collection.

It was about mid-morning when Stephen Gilbert received a telephone call from his daughter. She had seen a posting about the Lotovention on the local CBS affiliate, KYW, channel 3 news about activities around town this weekend. It listed the name of the event, the name and address of the hotel just before the news went to a commercial.

As a result of all the publicity, there were actually several occasions when someone stopped into the hotel to witness our event. Both Bill and Stephen handed them an application, a newsletter, and an informational sheet about the club and were encouraged to take as many tickets as they liked from the freebie tables.

"Man, you can make up five years worth of trading in just one day here"
Thomas Brock, #483, at the Lotovention

Interesting Stories Are Always Told

There's always some interesting stories told during a Lotovention and this year had its share.

I overheard a conversation between George Beilke, and Dave Kielbasinski, in which they talked about getting tickets from the area where Massachusetts meets Vermont and New Hampshire. Despite George living maybe 1500 miles away, this was a ticket run that he did when he visited his parents in upstate New York. This was also a ticket run that Dave did despite living several hundred miles away. So I chimed in that this too was a ticket run that I had done as we discussed the types of stores that we all went into at one time or another there. So you had three people from different areas all making the same type of ticket run to the same stores.

Then there was the story from Thomas Brock, #483. With many state lotteries holding a special raffle lottery on the fourth of July or on July 7th, which was the date of 7/7/7, players purchased a machine generated, paper ticket with a one of a kind number on it for a chance to win a million dollars, or more. Many states that had this raffle lottery including New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia and New Jersey.

Massachusetts also had this raffle game but in a different form from the others. Theirs was a $20, oversized, instant scratch ticket that contained a unique number instead of a machine generated number. The 'not-yet-cataloged-ticket-as-of-press time' game was called, "Star Spangled Sweepstakes" and would most likely prove to be a very tough ticket for collectors to find.