A family in Louisiana, USA, discovered damaged bonds in a deceased relative’s attic and decided to redeem them anyway.
They brought the shredded documents to the Louisiana Treasurer’s Office, where officials reassembled them 18 years later.
The bonds were valued at nearly $350,000.
Before the advent of computers, bonds allowed a company to borrow money in the financial markets.
Anyone who wanted could buy these bonds. In this way, she lent the company an amount that it had to repay to the lender over the long term. The company also paid interest throughout the life of the loan.
“You never know what may be unclaimed property,” Louisiana Treasurer John Schroder said in a press release.
The Louisiana had bought some bonds and deposited them in a Whitney Bank safe deposit box in New Orleans, the New York Post reports.
However, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, the bank was completely submerged.
When the Louisiana came to collect his bonds, they were soaked through.
The man would then have kept them in his attic, where they would likely have forgotten them.
His family found her cleaning his house shortly after his death.
The bindings were in tatters after being soaked and then dried in the heat of the attic.
Officials from the Unclaimed Property Department examined the bonds and found that the paying agent had declared the coupons and unclaimed interest before filing for bankruptcy.
The state still had the money and asked the family to bring the bad paper with them.
“This is a very rare instance where we have received all of the damaged paper bonds,” Mr Broussard said. “We scattered the torn and crumpled bonds on the conference table.” “In the end, we were able to reconcile the physical bonds with our treasury records and the large claim was paid to the heirs of those bonds,” said John Broussard, chief investment officer at the Louisiana Department of Treasury , in a statement.