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Sentimental coin mistakenly used as bus fare in Calgary returned to owner

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Sentimental coin mistakenly used as bus fare in Calgary returned to owner
WATCH: Almost daily odd things wind up in their fare boxes on Calgary Transit busses. Things like arcade and car wash tokens and foreign coins that don't have any value to them. But as Jill Croteau reports, one international coin proved to be a real treasure – Jun 19, 2018

Karanbir Singh was heading home from his girlfriend’s place on a Calgary Transit bus last week when he grabbed a handful of coins from her drawer for bus fare.

Little did he know that among the Canadian coins was a precious piece of silver.

“I didn’t know about that coin,” Singh recalled. “I took $3.30 — the fare for the bus.”

He had no idea the worth of that foreign coin he ended up dropping into the fare depository. The coin, a pisa, was given to his girlfriend from her grandfather who had passed away.

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“She started weeping and crying in sadness,” he said. “She had an attachment to that coin.”

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He assumed that special memento was gone forever, buried in a mountain of coins.

Desperate to get it back, he called Calgary Transit officials who hand sorted through the piles to recover the coin.

Calgary Transit collects piles of foreign coins and tokens that have no real value. Jill Croteau

Calgary Transit spokesperson Sherri Zickefoose said it was a challenge.

“We are talking a needle in a haystack,” she said.

“This is a coin in tons and tons of others. Of course when the staff learned this is a significant item of value they went into overtime to make sure they could find this coin.”

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