NS&I: Premium Bonds - older than 1990s

person1804

Hello there

I am the fortunate owner of £5 of Premium Bonds acquired within a year of my birthday circa 50 years ago! Woo hoo! I hear you cry: a whole £5. Well, yes, if adjusted for subsequent inflation (which painfully it is not) it would have been worth £33.89 in July 2025 according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator Still less than any prize-winning Premium Bond investment I could see from a quick scan of the top 50 pages/screens of wins for August 2025 (£50 being the lowest investment).

But I digress! As you can tell by my mentioning the winners for August 2025, every now and then (since I eventually tracked down the Premium Bond certificate) I have had a little look to see if I may have won some pitifully tiny amount. However, not once in the past near-fifty years have I won a penny!

What are the odds of that? Probably not that small. And hence really not worth writing about here.

However, what does appear odd, now that I have looked, is that my brief scan did not reveal any winner in the top 50 pages/screens of wins for August 2025 whose Premium Bonds date from before 1990. Odd? Were people less inclined to buy Premium Bonds back "in the old days" before MSE started advising on better options? How many Savings Bonds from before 1990 are still "live": there are a fair few relevant decades? And, being careful, why don't you check the number of winning bonds from the 1990s themselves: I could spot only 3 winners in 50 pages/screens of data?  Is the Premium Bond picking machine (is it still Ernie?) biased towards those who have bought bonds more recently...? If it is Ernie, is Ernie suffering from a kind of reverse Y2K issue? A kind of pro-21st-century bias? Can it wholly be the effect of inflation bursts in the 1970s given the absence of winning Premium Bonds from the 1980s?!

Maybe answering this question should be a tag-team with BBC's More or Less? 

I'll ask them too...

masonic

A combination of inflation, population growth, improvements in living standards, and people cashing in, could all contribute to there being fewer old bonds in circulation vs new ones.

There was also a myth that newer bonds were more likely to win, causing some to refresh theirs.

eskbanker

As I recall, they published a stat that something like 97% of premium bonds had been bought since 2000, so it's unsurprising that they dominate the prize list - obviously the world has moved on from people spending a quid on a premium bond and the average holding is now multiple thousands, with about 700K+ holding the maximum £50K I think.

And no, the notion that Ernie is more predisposed to pick more recent bonds is a myth!

Edit: here's the first page of the most recent big prize winner list, ordered by date purchased:

dcs34

eskbanker said:

As I recall, they published a stat that something like 97% of premium bonds had been bought since 2000, so it's unsurprising that they dominate the prize list - obviously the world has moved on from people spending a quid on a premium bond and the average holding is now multiple thousands, with about 700K+ holding the maximum £50K I think.

And no, the notion that Ernie is more predisposed to pick more recent bonds is a myth!

97% being bought since 2000 is an amazing statistic - no wonder that myth keeps coming up!

And of course the myth is cyclically self-fulfilling: if people believe that newer bonds win more often, then they cash in older bonds and open new ones. Which means there are more newer bonds. Which means, for a fixed number of winning bonds, more of them will be newer bonds. So newer bonds seem more likely to win (because there are more of them), so people cash in older bonds and...so on.

badmemory

I have 2 from 1957 & a lot more from much later.  No those old 2 have never won anything unlike the rest whose %age is keeping up with a normal interest rate.  Would I sell them?  No, they were Xmas presents when I was 11 from 2 grandparents, so I keep them for sentimental reasons.  Keeping them however does make selling any bonds a pain in the proverbial because you can't do it the usual way & need to do it by post.  I do suspect that anyone who has won with old bonds has kept them for the same sort of reasons.  Back when you could buy a £1 bond.

Eco_Miser

I have 21 pre-1971 bonds. One of them won £25 around 1958-9, and one won £25 in April 2016. It's not impossible for others to have won in the periods when I had nearly 30,000, fairly regular wins, but didn't keep track of the winning numbers.

Section62

badmemory said:

...Would I sell them?  No, they were Xmas presents when I was 11 from 2 grandparents, so I keep them for sentimental reasons.  Keeping them however does make selling any bonds a pain in the proverbial because you can't do it the usual way & need to do it by post.....

There's an online form which allows you to cash in specific bonds.  Using it is a bit more of a faff than making a withdrawal when logged in online, but is quicker and cheaper than posting a form.

I use it for a similar reason to you - my oldest bonds have sentimental value and I wouldn't want to cash them in.  So using this online form allows selection of (multiple) blocks of bonds purchased more recently.

https://forms.nsandi.com/gateway/online-forms/index#/form/withdraw-premium-bonds-myself

(the linked form asks for sensitive personal information, so make sure to check it is the right one and still current before using)

p00hsticks

masonic said:

A combination of inflation, population growth, improvements in living standards, and people cashing in, could all contribute to there being fewer old bonds in circulation vs new ones.

There was also a myth that newer bonds were more likely to win, causing some to refresh theirs.

Also the fact that bonds can't be inherited.
I've had to get two lots bought in the 50's and 60's cashed in recently as executor of estates. 

Kim_13

It would be good if they would reverse the default. Oldest bonds having a sentimental value is logical.

The first in first out approach also helps to peddle the myth that older bonds win less.

molerat

In my bonds I have £56 worth bought in the 70s and they have had 3 x £50 wins in 85, 88 & 92, nothing since.  MrsM has £6 bought in the 60s and has not won anything on them at all.  A £2K bond I bought in 1994 has had 24 wins including a £500 this April.  The rest of ours have been purchased since 2020 and we have only had 2 dry months since Jul 22 currently sitting at a 3.56% return on the rolling year - was at a high of 4.39% a few months back.

fuzzzzy

Kim_13 said:

It would be good if they would reverse the default. Oldest bonds having a sentimental value is logical.

The first in first out approach also helps to peddle the myth that older bonds win less.

Yes I wish they would reverse the default so that oldest bonds are not automatically sold first. For now I have kept the 5 bonds that date to my birth separate from my main holding and make sure I check if they have won every month. I don't want to amalgamate them into the main holding as it will be too much hassle when I want to sell bonds.