It is important that the lottery box is splintering and damaged and that the original wooden tickets have been lost. First, these facts reveal that the lottery has been going on for a very long time. Second, though the villagers talk about repairing or replacing the lottery box, they never do, which suggests their deep unease with perpetuating the lottery. To repair the box would be to show an investment in the continuation of this tradition. So would replacing the original wooden lottery tickets.

Instead, the villagers seem to be hoping that this barbaric custom will fade away. Mrs. Adams, for instance, mentions that other villages have abandoned their lotteries. It is the old-timers, like Old Man Warner, who keep the lottery alive, even though the state of its artifacts show clearly that it is an outdated ritual.

In Shirley Jackson's story, "The Lottery," by the fact that the olriginal paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, but the people have replaced it and put it into use "even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born," there is a clear indication that the villagers are a flock of sheep who blindly and unthinkingly follow tradition simply because it is tradition.  For, if the community had had any of a logical and reasonable nature, once the box and other paraphernalia connected to the lottery was lost, these people should have rethought this heinous tradition and done away with it as other communities have.

Therefore, the mention of the loss and replacement of the original paraphernalia is key to the understanding of the mentality of the villagers who continue a ritual of such a nature.  This mentality underscores Jackson's themes of Custom and Tradition and Violence and Cruelty.