Big (Mac) Fail!!

What a McIdiot! Student throws away winning £500,000 McDonald's Monopoly sticker

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 3:58 PM on 5th May 2010

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Unlucky: Richard Newman won the rare Mayfair sticker but thew it away - only to get Park Lane days later

When student Richard Newman found a Monopoly sticker on his McDonald's meal, he had no idea what it was.

So the 35-year-old simply threw it away, not realising it was the rarest sticker in the game - and it could have won him half a million pounds.

The PhD philosophy student and his girlfriend collected the Mayfair card when they bought burgers and french fries at a drive-thru McDonalds.

Not knowing it was for the Easy Win Monopoly game, they stuck it to his car steering wheel, and later threw it away.

But two weeks later, he visited the restaurant again and won the matching Park Lane sticker.

Twigging that they could have won a prize, his girlfriend Chloe Gray, 27, checked on the rules of the game.

And the couple then discovered that the pair of properties could have netted them £500,000.

But by that time Mr Newman had cleaned out his Toyota Corolla and simply thrown the sticker in a wheelie bin.

The disappointed student told The Sun that when they were given the original sticker at the McDonald's in Sheffield they had not known about the competition.

Mr Newman told the paper: 'If I'd have been playing the game, I'd have known I'd struck gold.'

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His girlfriend said they had now got over the 'what-ifs' but described the moment they found out as 'awful'.

McDonald's said they were unable to pay out without the winning stickers.

A website which gives details of which prizes are left unclaimed and which are the rarest stickers revealed that Park Lane was the most common sticker to win, while the Mayfair ticket - the one which Mr Newman threw away - was the rarest.