It’s the moment a lot of you have been waiting for all year – the McDonald’s Monopoly is back until 2nd May 2017! There are so many prizes to win and sticker collectors take it super-seriously. The best bit? Eating McDonald’s without the guilt!

I used to work in McDonalds (but didn’t get any stars), which didn’t help the size of my backside – so know all the tricks to boost your chances of winning.

What is McDonald’s Monopoly Win Win 2017?

On some McDonald’s food and drink packaging, you’ll see stickers attached (in twos or threes) with the names of places on a Monopoly board (Park Lane, Old Kent Road etc etc).

Not every food item has stickers though. Medium and large fries have them – but Big Macs don’t, for example – so don’t order blindly if it’s your intention to collect. Here’s a big list of items with stickers.

The object of the competition is to collect complete set of properties – just like it is in the game. And some are worth more than others. Once you have them all, you’ll win a prize. There are also instant win stickers too.

What are the prizes?

Instant win stickers

Even if you don’t want to try and collect stickers, there are chances to win prizes instantly – in fact, a whopping 45,000,000 chances.

It’s not just free drinks and McFlurry’s up for grabs either – there are cars, games consoles and cash too.

The full list includes:

• 4 x £25,000 cash
• 5 x Mini
• 10 x £1500 Airtours voucher
• 400 x Action Cameras
• 600 x Hotel Breaks
• 1000 x £200 cash
• 4,500 x Build Your Own Skateboard Kit
• 100 PlayStation 4s
• 3,000 x NOW TV box & year’s pass
• 400 x £250 Red Letter Days voucher
• 2200 x £150 Red Letter Days voucher
• 350 x £100 to spend at Prezzybox.com
• 250 x £50 to spend at Prezzybox.com
• 1250 x £25 to spend at Prezzybox.com
• 1,000 x Wireless speakers
• 3,000 x Hasbro Monopoly board game
• 15,000 x pair of cinema tickets
• 30,000 x phone case
• 2,000 x £30 Boohoo.com voucher
• 1,500,000 x NOW TV pass

Property stickers

Just like the board game, if you collect a full set of property stickers (again, some are worth more than others), you can get a prize.

What you really want is those coveted rare stickers – so keep an eye out for them, or negotiate a swap on Facebook.

There’s a lot of selling and swapping on Facebook and Reddit, because people know that it is worth forking out for certain stickers if they’re guaranteed a prize. So if you’re not up for collecting, its always worth seeing what stickers you do come across are worth.

• Euston Road – £30 Boohoo.com voucher – 10,000 available
• Northumberland Avenue – Wireless speaker – 3,000 available
• Marlborough Street – £250 Red Letter Days voucher – 1,200 available
• Liverpool Street Station – Now TV box + pass – 13,000 available
• Strand – Playstation 4 – 500 available
• Coventry Street – £1,500 holiday voucher – 150 available
• Bond Street – Mini Cooper – 20 available
• Mayfair – £100,000 cash – 4 available

Online game stickers

There’s also an online game this year. If you get packaging with two or three stickers, one of them will be a unique code which you enter online. You’ll find out straight away if you’ve won.

Tricks to get extra stickers and more prizes

• Get involved with Facebook swaps – Just sayin’, totally set up one last year. Join it and switch to fill up your ‘sets’ quickly.
• Do it in the middle of the night – When it comes to entering online codes, enter in the middle of the night, or really early in the morning. If you enter at lunchtime/dinnertime, there will be more people entering at the same time, so the odds won’t be in your favour.
• Ask for a cup of water – Look for the kindest looking staff member, put on your sweetest smile and ask for an extra cup, or a cup of tap water. I happily used to give them out when I worked there – I don’t lose out, and it helped someone else.
• Get wombling – When working at McDonald’s, I couldn’t help but notice people are messy sods. They’ll leave their rubbish everywhere. The good news – the rubbish now has stickers and prizes on them.
• Get a discount –  There are free McDonald’s vouchers everywhere – the back of receipts, bus tickets and newspapers. Keep an eye out for discounts and freebies to keep the cost low.

Will you be collecting this year? How successful have you been in the past? Tell me in the comments.