NS&I: Premium Bonds - older than 1990s

eskbanker

dcs34 said:

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.

I just went back to try to find where I came across that - it's no longer published by NS&I as far as I can see but an old archived page copy with 2019 data referred to:

Are newer Bonds luckier?

Every eligible £1 Bond has the same chance to win a prize in every monthly draw. Newer Bonds seem luckier because over 95% of those currently held have been purchase since 2000.

and at that stage there were 'only' 80bn bonds in circulation, so less than 4bn would have been acquired pre-2000, i.e. now that there are 132bn active, that 4bn, even if they're all still current, can only be less than about 3% of the total.