The winning bidder gets their name stitched into the coat. Right, Christopher Matlashewski models the now-famous fake fur coat.

A fake fur coat has taken on a life of its own, with its own Twitter handle, a Facebook page with 100 plus “likes” and a scrapbook about its history. It took a trip to Englands. And the fake brown pelt has raised $26,000 for the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. Not bad for a $1 purchase that Realtor Christopher Matlashewski made because he was cold.

Five years ago, the Realtor with Royal LePage Foothills in Calgary was in St. John’s for the company’s national conference. Wearing just a t-shirt and feeling cold, he bought a coat, partly for fun and mostly for warmth, that he saw in a Salvation Army Thrift Store window and wore it the rest of the morning.

“I got a bunch of stares,” says Matlashewski, who wore the coat in the hotel lobby and to the hospitality suite. When it was time to head home, he left the coat at the hotel. Little did he know it was left, but not forgotten. A colleague thought Matlashewski mistakenly left the coat and took it back to Calgary. The colleague’s son wore the coat for a school project about the fur trade, and people liked the coat so much, it got Matlashewski thinking. He decided to take the fake fur to the next conference in Penticton in 2009 and offer it up as an auction item.

He wore it and zipped across the lake on a jet ski, then modelled the soaking-wet fur on the dock. “That night we auctioned it off,” says Matlashewski, who promised to match any bid up to $500. “That night the coat raised $4,500 for the women’s shelter.”

Each year since, the highest bidder wins the coat for a year. One winning bidder took it to Paris. In 2010, Teresa Mardon, an agent with Royal LePage Noralta in Edmonton, put together a scrap book containing history and photos of the coat and its travels. One 24-hour photo op at $20 a pop, raised over $1,000.

The name of each winning bidder is stitched into the coat. “People get a tax break and have fun with the coat. It’s like the Stanley Cup – people have their photos taken with it,” he says.

Matlashewski, who has spent his nine years as a Realtor with Royal LePage Foothills, said he would have been happy had the coat raised $10,000 but to date it has been much more successful.

Matlashewski says, “The coolest part is that Realtors do cool things just because” but it’s great when a fun idea takes off and raises so much money for charity.

Visit the faux fur coat’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/112673822171574 – Connie Adair