[TylerE]

The way scratcher play works is that the states are required to report wins over a certain threshold. So if you keep a keen eye on the state website, it’s possible to determine how many of the big awards (say $10k+), which is where the bulk of the value is. Using that you can estimate what the outstanding prize pool is. You won’t know with any precision… but basically the idea is they look for games that have been on the market a long time, and thus sold through a large portion of their inventory, but where the big prizes are still mostly in play.

They absolutely aren’t trying to buy them all, that would just be a guaranteed loss, since they only return about 40 cents on the dollar.