14 South Carolina Instant Games on sale today have zero top prizes left. Every one already claimed — and every one still on the rack at full price, with the headline number printed on the front.
The South Carolina Lottery publishes, for every prize tier of every game, how many prizes were printed and how many are still unclaimed. That is enough to work out exactly what each game has left — so we pull it daily and rank every active game.
Cheap tickets pay back the least
Average value returned per dollar, grouped by ticket price, across every active South Carolina game.
The same pattern turns up in every state we analyse: South Carolina climbs from 59 % on $1 tickets to 77 % on $20 ones, the same climb we find in our Texas, California and every other state's data. Eighteen unrelated state lotteries keep making the same design decision: the cheap tickets on the rack are the worst value in the shop. That does not make an expensive ticket a good bet — it is still a guaranteed average loss, just a smaller one per dollar, with far more money at risk per ticket.
Every South Carolina game, ranked
How to read this
"Value per $1 now" is the unclaimed prize money divided by what it would cost to buy every remaining ticket. A game showing 70% means players will get back about 70 cents per dollar across the tickets still out there. "At launch" is the same figure for the full print run — what the game was designed to pay.
The gap between those columns is the point: a game well below its launch figure has had its big prizes claimed and is now a worse deal than designed. The "riding on top prize" column is the health warning — where much of the remaining value sits in one tier, the rating hangs on a couple of tickets that may already be sold.
Across every state we analyse, cheaper tickets return less — we tested that on 1,275 games in 18 states and it held in all of them: read the full analysis.
Every South Carolina game launches returning roughly 62 % to 78 % of sales as prizes. That is the house edge, and no game escapes it — this table shows which are currently least bad, never which are good. See what expected value means and where your lottery dollar goes.
How we calculate it
South Carolina publishes, for every prize tier of every instant game, the number of prizes at the start of the game and the number still unclaimed — along with the ticket price and the game's overall odds, which together give the size of the print run. The state also stamps each page with the date and time the figures were last updated.
Two honest limitations. South Carolina does not publish a percent-sold figure, so we infer it from the share of prizes already claimed; because small prizes often go unredeemed, that understates sales and makes these figures slightly conservative. And "unclaimed" is not the same as "unsold" — a top prize counted as remaining may already sit in a ticket someone bought and hasn't cashed. Late in a print run that gap dominates, so games over 90% sold are flagged and hidden by default.
Compare states on the scratch games hub, or see how draw games differ on the most winnable game map.
Estimates derived from South Carolina Lottery published prize data — not official figures, and not a prediction about any individual ticket. These games are negative-expected-value by design: every game listed returns less than it costs across all players. For information and entertainment only — not financial or gambling advice. You must be 18+ to play. If gambling is a problem for you or someone you know, call 1-800-GAMBLER.