A lottery winner came within moments of throwing a £41,000 fortune in the rubbish bin.
Known only as Mambo, 22, the US-based sales worker reportedly thought the card had already been checked and went to get rid.
From Temple Hills, Maryland State, US, he said: "We were going to throw the ticket away. We are lucky we didn't!"
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Stopping off at the Wawa #584 convenience store in the city of La Plata, Charles County, he says he bought $30 (£25) worth of scratch cards and worked through them all.
"I had a few bucks in my pocket and I decided to play,” he said in a statement to Maryland Lottery.
He is understood to have gone through the stack with his wife and the pair built up two piles, one with winning cards and the other with cards that had not returned any change at all.
One of the cards sitting in the loser pile was a Gold X20 ticket – it had already been checked but for some reason, he decided to give it another once over.
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Much to his amazement, that card ended up being the winning ticket allowing the pair to avoid total disaster.
It is understood that the massive cash injection is going to go towards getting the couple a new home.
He said: "We were both deciding if we should try to get a house in this tough market. We will get one now."
Maryland Lottery added: "Mambo won the game's fifth of nine USD 50,000 (£41,482) top prizes."
The shop the couple bought the scratchy from will also get a nice little payday of its own for stocking the winning card.
It is believed that a tidy $500 or £415 is on its way to the store for having the top-prize ticket in its stock.
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