Old Canada Savings Bonds: What They're Worth Now

Somebody finds one in a filing cabinet, a shoebox, or the papers a parent left behind: a stiff, slightly yellowed certificate with a dollar amount printed on it and a date decades in the past. The short answer is that it’s still money. Every Canada Savings Bond and Canada Premium Bond can be cashed at any Canadian bank, for its full value, and the Bank of Canada was still carrying $386.9 million in unredeemed bonds and retail savings plans at the end of 2025. The longer answer is how much yours is worth, which depends almost entirely on when it was issued.

What is an old Canada Savings Bond worth today?

It depends on which of the two kinds you’re holding. A regular interest bond (an R bond) pays you its face value and nothing more, because the interest was mailed out every year until the bond matured. A compound interest bond (a C bond) pays its face value plus every year of interest it earned, all at once, when you cash it. The certificate says which one it is.

What a $100 compound interest bond became

Compound bonds are where the real money is, and the era matters far more than how long you held it. Using the Bank of Canada’s historical rate tables (opens in a new tab) for matured series:

Read the top and bottom rows together. The 1977 bond ran for nine years and nearly tripled. The 2011 bond ran for ten years, one year longer, and gained five dollars. Canada Savings Bonds paid 19.50% in 1981 and 0.50% in 2011, and that gap is the whole story of what an old certificate is worth.

These are close approximations. The published table rounds to two decimal places and the Bank of Canada calculates actual interest on rates carried to seven, so your real figure will sit near these rather than exactly on them. The lookup below gives the exact one.

Get the exact number in about thirty seconds

Type your certificate number into the Bank of Canada’s bond status search (opens in a new tab). It covers Canada Savings Bonds from Series 32 to 129 and Canada Premium Bonds from Series 1 to 89, and where the bond can be redeemed it shows you the redemption value outright. There’s no account to create and it’s free.

One thing that catches people out: this is a different tool from the unclaimed balances search on the same website, the one where you type your last name. Bonds are not in that database. Searching your name there and getting no results tells you nothing about whether you hold a bond.

How do you cash an old Canada Savings Bond?

Take the paper certificate to the bank or credit union where you already bank and hand it to a teller. They’ll ask every registered owner to sign the back, and they’ll pay you in cash or straight into your account. The certificate is the only paperwork.

The certificate and the name on it are what decide whether you walk out with the money:

You need the physical certificate. The paper itself is what the bank redeems. If it’s gone, that’s a separate process, covered below.

The registered owner has to be there. The name printed on the certificate is the only person entitled to the funds, and on a co-owned bond both owners have to sign. This is the one that surprises families. A grandparent who bought a $500 bond for a grandchild in 1998 put the grandchild’s name on it, and only the grandchild can cash it, whatever the receipt says. If the owner is still a minor, the parent or guardian with legal custody signs on their behalf.

Do you owe tax when you cash it?

Almost certainly not at the moment you cash it, which is the one question the Bank of Canada’s redemption pages leave alone. Interest on a compound bond was taxable in the years it built up, not in the year you finally redeem. So cashing a bond now hands you money that was already reported, year by year, on your returns.

The mechanism is the anniversary day rule. For a bond bought in 1990 or later, the CRA’s rule is that you report the interest earned during each complete investment year (opens in a new tab), even where no T5 slip arrived. Bonds bought before 1990 accrued under an older rule, and every series issued that long ago matured decades back. Either way, interest stopped on the last bonds in December 2021, so redeeming one now pays out principal and interest that has already been through the tax system.

The risk runs the other way. If a bond compounded for twenty years and that interest never went on anyone’s return, the tax was owed in those years and cashing the bond doesn’t create it or erase it. That’s worth a conversation with an accountant or with the CRA before you spend the money, particularly on a large bond or one that came through an estate. This is general information rather than tax advice, and the amounts turn on your own returns.

What if you can’t find the certificate?

You can still get paid, but it takes about three months and it costs money. The Bank of Canada runs a lost bond process for Canada Savings Bonds from Series 32 up and Canada Premium Bonds issued in 1977 or later. Anything older than that isn’t eligible, which is the hard limit on a very old missing certificate.

It runs like this. You mail a Lost Bond Request Form to the Unclaimed Properties Office in Ottawa, they mail you back a Bond of Indemnity, you sign it in front of a witness, and you pay a surety fee to HUB International by cheque. Under $3,500 the witness can be anyone of legal age; above that you need a notary or a commissioner of oaths.

Manitoba residents add 7% retail sales tax and Saskatchewan residents 6%. The fee can’t come out of your redemption, so you pay it up front, and the Bank of Canada asks for 8 to 10 weeks after HUB has the paperwork and the payment before the cheque goes out. Full steps are on the Bank of Canada’s lost bond page (opens in a new tab).

Is a Canada Premium Bond the same as a UK Premium Bond?

No, and the shared name misleads a lot of people. British Premium Bonds pay no interest at all and enter you into a monthly prize draw instead, with a top prize of £1 million. Canada Premium Bonds never had a draw, a prize, or a jackpot. They were an ordinary savings bond that paid a slightly higher fixed rate than a Canada Savings Bond in exchange for being harder to cash early.

Canada Premium Bonds were first issued in 1997 and sold until 2017, and they matured on the same schedule as everything else in the program. If you’re holding one, treat it exactly like a Canada Savings Bond: same tool, same bank counter, same two interest types. If what you actually came looking for is the prize draw idea, the Premium Bonds and Save to Win comparison covers how those programs work and what exists in Canada.

What it costs to leave it in the drawer

A matured bond is the rare case where doing nothing has a measurable price. The bond stopped paying in December 2021 and the amount it’s worth hasn’t moved since. Canadian consumer prices have risen about 18% over the same stretch, from a CPI of 144.0 in December 2021 to 169.8 in August 2026, per Statistics Canada (opens in a new tab). So $100 of matured bond buys roughly $85 of what it bought the month it stopped earning.

That’s the argument for a Saturday morning trip to the bank, and plenty of Canadians have made the trip. Retail debt outstanding fell from $2.6 billion in March 2018 to $386.9 million at the end of 2025, and $26.7 million of it was cashed in 2025 alone.

Somewhere better for the money to sit

Once the cheque clears you’re holding a few hundred dollars that has been doing nothing for years, and the obvious move is a high-interest savings account, where it earns a real rate again.

Lodavo is worth knowing about for what happens next, because the hard part of a small windfall is leaving it alone. It’s a free app from a Montreal team, and it rewards you for saving. Every $25 sitting in your savings earns you a ticket, the draw runs every week with prizes up to $10,000, and a guaranteed prize of at least $100 goes to a user every single week. Your money stays in the savings account you already have, at whatever rate your bank pays, so the draw is added on top of the interest rather than traded against it. It’s closer in spirit to the British Premium Bonds than anything Canada ever actually sold.

Cash it, then keep it moving

An old certificate in a drawer is real money that stopped growing in 2021. Look it up, sign it at the counter, and give the proceeds somewhere to go. Lodavo is free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) and the Google Play Store (opens in a new tab). Connect the account the money lands in, and your savings start earning tickets for the next weekly draw.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.