Lottery ticket vending machine

A lottery ticket vending machine comprising:

• a housing;
• a ticket drawer column in the housing, the ticket drawer column comprising a plurality of ticket drawers, each of the ticket drawers configured to hold a strip of lottery tickets;
• a ticket burster in the housing, the ticket burster:
• (a) defining a ticket inlet and a ticket outlet,
• (b) movable to a plurality of different ticket receipt positions, each different ticket receipt position associated with and in alignment with a different one of the ticket drawers,
• (c) comprising a burster-mark former configured to form a burster mark on the lottery ticket that moves through the ticket burster, and
• (d) comprising a burster mark sensor supported by the ticket burster and configured to create signals based on the burster mark on the lottery ticket;
• and
• a controller configured to receive signals created by the burster mark sensor, determine if the lottery ticket is improperly positioned based on the signals, and cause a corrective action to be taken responsive to determining that the lottery ticket is improperly positioned.

A lottery ticket vending machine comprising:

• a housing;
• a lottery ticket drawer supported by the housing and configured to hold lottery tickets;
• a ticket burster supported by the housing and comprising a burster mark former and a burster mark sensor;
• and
• a controller supported by the housing, the controller configured to operate with the burster mark former to form a burster mark in or on one of the lottery tickets and to operate with the burster mark sensor to determine if said lottery ticket is fed in to the ticket burster in a proper position to enable the ticket burster to properly separate said lottery ticket from another one of the lottery tickets received from the ticket drawer based on the burster mark, and to cause a corrective action to be taken responsive to determining that the ticket burster is improperly separating the lottery tickets.