Brian McPherson walked into a Canadian Tire this week with a simple goal: to spend a small fortune he had amassed over the past 15 years on a riding mower.
And he did just that, dropping a cool $1,053 -- in Canadian Tire currency.
The cashier, needless to say, was a little surprised.
"I put the case down and opened it up and she kind of had a look of ‘Oh my' on her face," McPherson, 29, told CTV News.
McPherson, who lives in Edmonton, began saving Canada's unofficial second currency when he was 14, after the purchase of a hockey stick. At the time, the most expensive item in the store was a riding mower, and he vowed that one day he would buy it.
Over the years, he figures he's spent about $20,000 in real money to save up the Canadian Tire cash.
Lael Horne, a Canadian Tire cashier, said she's never seen anyone save as much as McPherson.
"We've had people coming in with a few hundred, little stacks and things like that, but I've never seen one over a $1,000," Horne said.
To put McPherson's accomplishment in perspective, $30 worth of items earns about 10 cents in Canadian Tire money.
Not even McPherson's wife thought he would ever save enough for the lawn mower.
"I just thought, ‘I don't think he's ever going to get there,'" Kristen McPherson said.
Now McPherson has another problem. He has his first riding mower, but he doesn't actually have that big of a lawn.
"It's one of those things I set out to do and that's what I told everybody I was going to do, so to get something else would be silly," the Edmontonian said.
"I just wanted to follow through with what I was doing."
Canadian Tire's iconic money has endured for 50 years despite recent rumours it might be phased out for a card.
