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Looking back, Chang reminisces about the many long waits and surprises that went with collecting Taiwan Lottery tickets. Taking out a specimen copy of the first Taiwan Lottery tickets ever (he purchased it four years ago for NT$170,000), he explains, "Specimens were printed to be posted up by vendors to advertise the lottery. They were not official tickets, nor were very many made, so they are very difficult to come by." After careful consideration and knowing it was probably the only one of its kind left In Taiwan and the only one his collection lacked, Chang bit the bullet and shelled out the money for the pricey specimen.
Similar psychological torment went into buying lottery ticket sheets (tickets were printed in sheets of ten, 15 and 20) for his collection. Chang went through a lot in his mission to collect ticket sheets from the 1,171 Taiwan Lottery drawings. First of all, because drawings 1,086, 1,121, and 1,151 fell on Chinese New Year, the Bank of Taiwan, the lottery ticket issuer, made the pot for first prize a little sweeter. The media predicted that the public would scramble to buy lottery ticket sheets and if somebody became the sole winner on one of them, they would become filthy rich. The bank heeded the warning and sold tickets individually, making collecting intact sheets of them exceedingly difficult.
"Intriguing numbers" are also a favorite of collectors. Chang explains that at the time, the public was convinced that repeat number tickets, like 888888, would never win. Chang checked the list of winning numbers for all drawings over the years and discovered that no repeat numbers had, in fact, ever won. What's more, concerned that agents would not be willing to sell tickets with these types of numbers, the issuer removed them from the ticket sheets and sold them separately. Chang spent two years trying to find the one repeat number ticket needed to complete his "interesting numbers" collection.
Back then, lottery ticket sales points could be found everywhere--bus ticket kiosks, jewelry stores, hardware stores, tea shops, barber shops, and even rice stores. Taking out a Five Tigers Record Company record cover, Chang points at the printing, "Lucky Ticket." He explains that to encourage the purchase of legal copies, record companies printed lottery ticket numbers onto album covers. Winners got a free gift.
Chang is the only collector in Taiwan with a complete set of Taiwan Lottery tickets. His collection consists of individual tickets, lottery ticket sheets, specimens, "interesting numbers," and winning number lists, and even things like sales point advertising signs and special lottery cash bags used by ticket agents. He certainly deserves the title Taiwan's Lottery Guru .
Making it rich in the lottery is everybody's dream, but it really makes you stop and think when you realize that winning first prize in a US lottery recently compelled a China Airlines employee to flee both home and job.