Mavis Legg, 80, contacted the newspaper last year after we ran an article that there were thousands of pounds-worth of prizes that had never been claimed from bonds held locally.
Mrs Legg found two Premium Bond certificates among her late father’s belongings, but when she contacted National Savings & Investments, which runs the government-backed investment scheme, she was told they were not in his name and therefore they could not give her any information about them, or whether they had ever won a prize.
‘I can remember my father coming into the kitchen and announcing he’d bought the bonds, then he put them in his wallet,’ said Mrs Legg, ‘When we contacted NS&I we couldn’t understand why they weren’t in dad’s name.’
Her father, John Simon, who was a well-known water diviner, died in 1986, but the bonds were not discovered until her mother died in 2009 and they found some more of her father’s belongings, including his wallet, where the bonds had sat undisturbed for more than 40 years.
Through the Guernsey Press, NS&I were given a variety of names that the bonds could belong to, from Mrs Legg’s father’s friends and relations, and after six weeks it was discovered that one of the bonds was in the name of Florence Legg, Mrs Legg’s mother-in-law, who died in 1978.
That means that the bond now belongs to her husband Michael, who is the last surviving child of 13 siblings.
Mrs Legg has no idea why her father would have bought a bond and registered it in her mother-in-law’s name.
‘I can only think he bought it for me and put the wrong initial down?’
The ownership of the other bond is, and is likely to remain, a mystery.
The bad news for Mrs Legg was that the unclaimed prize pot for her bond was non-existent. It had never won a prize despite being entered in more than 1,300 monthly draws, and the numbers still are in the draw.
And because Premium Bonds do not increase in value over time, in line with inflation, it is still worth just £1. Inflation over the years would have taken the value of the bond to £15.87.
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