Even though the county remains home to seven of the top 10 retailers, all of them have seen lottery sales drop anywhere from 9 percent to 40 percent.

"Anything new, your business is going to decrease," said Victor Boulware, a manager at Borderline Mini Mart in Clover. Sales there dipped by 32 percent, yet the store still has the fifth-highest lottery sales in the state.

The reason the state gained even as top retailers lost?

Instant games, Pick 3 and Pick 4 more than made up the difference.

S.C. Education Lottery Executive Director Ernie Passailaigue said special promotions helped those sales. Over the summer, for example, lottery players could send in $20 worth of certain nonwinning instant tickets to enter a series of "second-chance" drawings for prize packages, cash and Ford Mustang convertibles.

Three finalists were selected Friday to win the convertibles -- including Wendell Hughes, 46, of Fort Mill. One of the cars comes with $1 million in the trunk. Which car holds the cash will be revealed during the S.C. State Fair in Columbia this month. Officials don't expect to maintain increased sales, though, even after a record $1.14 billion in gross sales in fiscal year 2006 -- $200 million more than predicted.

The lottery commission made conservative estimates for the fiscal year that started July 1, anticipating a loss of business from Charlotte-area players who no longer have to drive across the border, Passailaigue said.

Higher gas rates were also expected to discourage sales because 90 percent of lottery sales occur at gas station convenience stores, Passailaigue said. On top of that, two unusually large Powerball jackpots of $340 million and $365 million boosted sales last year, Passailaigue said, and the commission knew it couldn't count on that again.

"We can't control what North Carolina does; we can't control what the gas price does," he said. "The prudent thing to do is to budget for the worst case, and we'll just have to see how it plays out. We're hopeful that it won't be as Draconian as what has been predicted."

Since the N.C. lottery launched on March 30, South Carolina's Powerball, Palmetto Cash 5 and Add-A-Play (a $1 online game) have dropped. Powerball sales went down 9 percent, while Add-A-Play went down nearly 35 percent. Instant tickets, which account for about 60 percent of all lottery sales, increased by 5 percent.

North Carolina started selling Powerball tickets in May and is expected to add Pick 3 and Carolina Cash 5 in October. Since its launch, the N.C. lottery has sold about $445.6 million in instant and Powerball tickets. The state hopes to average about $100 million in sales a month and currently is doing about $80 million.

That is to be expected, said Pam Walker, communications director for the N.C. Education Lottery.

"We don't have a full range of games out there yet," she said.

Passailaigue said he's heard of other states -- Kentucky, for one -- that lost sales when a neighboring state added a lottery, but it's not impossible to bounce back.

The lottery commission could decide to get more aggressive with advertising or add more expensive games, such as a $20 ticket, he said. (The most expensive now is $10.)

Of every dollar spent on the lottery, 28 cents goes into education. It's hard to predict what would get cut if sales, which have been steadily increasing since the lottery launched in 2002, started dropping. State law calls for general funding to pick up potential lottery shortfalls for certain programs, such as the LIFE and Palmetto Fellows college scholarships.

In the mean time, Passailaigue and others will be tracking numbers carefully as North Carolina continues adding more games.

Patricia Broome, assistant manager at Red Rocket Fireworks off U.S. 21 in Fort Mill, said she thought she'd see lottery sales eventually go back up. Some N.C. customers, she said, have continued coming because "they say they don't like the North Carolina lottery, especially the scratch-off games, because they don't win anything."

Boulware, at the Clover Borderline Mini Mart, said he's kept N.C. customers who still find his store most convenient, or else they just prefer it.

"It all goes back to customer service ... because people can spend their money wherever they want to," he said. "You treat them right, let them know you appreciate their business, and they'll come back."