McDonalds is running it’s Monopoly games again. As someone who is unlikely to actually eat there more than once during the game it’s not like I’d acquire very many game pieces. The instant winners and such are pretty clear just looking at them, it says ‘you won a free McFlurry’ or whatever.
I’m wondering about the properties where you need to collect multiple pieces. Of any given property type there is only one that is has impossible odds to get. Someone could get a hundred ‘Park Places’ but never the ‘Board Walk’ they need to win. Is that Board Walk piece labeled any different than the ‘Park Place’ Does it say ‘hey stupid this is a grand prize winning piece?’ Could someone potentially get Boardwalk and just toss it as they do other pieces, thinking ‘I’ll never see Park Place?’
On one hand it might be great for McDonalds to end up not having to pay out on a contest because someone was oblivious on the other it would be poor PR if they couldn’t show someone won.
Same question applies to scratch tickets. Do they make the big winners any more obvious. Could someone easily miss the fact they had a winning number on the card and toss a million dollar ticket?
Scratch tickets, in my experience, will tend to repeat either the prize, or “Your Number” you need to match on certain, bigger winning tickets. The tickets that win big are kinda… Clumpy. They ““fever”” not unlike pachinko machines… It’s a nuanced thing, but if you know what to look for, it’s there repeatedly.
When I used to play scratch off tickets, especially if it was the more complicated ones (like crossword puzzles), I’d always bring in my losers and have them scanned anyways. Didn’t hurt anything if they really were worthless and sometimes a few of them would be worth a buck or two and I just missed it.
Keep in mind that, even if you have Boardwalk, it’s not an automatic win… You do still need Park Place, and, though it’s far more common, it’s not like you can just walk into McDonald’s and say “Hey, give me Park Place”.
The odds are the same, per McDonald’s, of having Park Place & Boardwalk and just having Boardwalk, but I’ve had more luck with the 1:18 McGriddles than the 1:11 Park Place–there’s still that element of luck.
I don’t know anything about the McDonald’s “game pieces,” but I know that millions of dollars in state lottery prizes–mostly the secondary prizes in games with well-known jackpots–go unclaimed each year. That is, they know the winning numbers were printed at a certain place and time, but nobody ever shows up with them.
Thanks for that. I had the OP’s situation & question but wasn’t interested enough to follow it up.
The other day the clerk handed me a big handful of game pieces with my Egg McMuffin (the only McD food I’ll eat). I wondered if I had any of the valuable ones. Nope. Darn. I do have 3 sets of free medium fries though.
The story itself is from 2001. The web page carrying the story is loaded with current 2016 ads and is labeled with an April 2016 copyright. It’d be easy to get confused about which game had the problems.
I thought I was reading a current event until I got to the part about US Attorney General Ashcroft.
What happens if you lodge a claim with a valid rare (eg Boardwalk )
but somehow the common (Park Place) is invalid, eg last months, came in from overseas somewhere, or the token you used was damaged ?
The rare is marked with specific codes to prevent frauds. ( say you had one, could you duplicate it ? nope.)
How are the odds of collecting Park Place and Boardwalk identical to the odds of collecting Boardwalk on its own, when the odds of collecting Park Place are 1 in 11?
Park Place is so easy to get that the difference between Boardwalk plus Park Place and Boardwalk alone gets lost when they round off the odds to the nearest integer.
