Not many people throw prize money into a wastepaper bin unless its still in the form of a lottery ticket and you thought it was worth nothing, which is what happened to Zaidin, Granada.

Serafín runs a lottery office in this suburb of Granada so he was one of the first to find out that a ticket that he had sold was a winning number – second prize in the ordinary national lottery (not the special Christmas draw).

He remembered who he had sold it to, so when the 80-year-old gent walked in, he congratulated him on his 6,000-euro win. Instead of joy, the man’s jaw sagged in consternation – on the way to the lottery office he had ripped the lottery ticket in two and thrown it into a wastepaper bin in the street, convinced that it was a dud.

He left the shop at a pace that belied his 80-odd years in search of the said wastepaper bin. He was in luck because after searching frantically through the contents of the bin he was able to find both parts of the ticket, so he set off again for the lottery office. With a piece of Cellotape the ticket was back in a presentable state and sent off to the head office along with the winner’s bank-account details.

That’s what you call a double-dose of good luck!

(News: Zaidin, Granada, Andalucia)