The new owner of a bond from 1820 collected his interest this week from the municipality of Middelburg. A Zeeland auction house sold the perpetual document at the beginning of this year for 50 euros.
At that auction, several old securities went under the hammer, including the bond issued on August 16, 1820. Han Verbeem, reporter for regional broadcaster De Bevelanden, was the highest bidder and calls it “a beautiful, historical document”.
The bond contains the following text: “The Municipal Board of Middelburg hereby acknowledges that the holder of this Bond is entitled to an irrevocable Capital of the Municipal established debt of the same City, to the sum of Two Hundred Guldens.” The holder of the security receives an “annual interest of three percent”, payable “at the office of the Lord Urban Receiver.”
The 200 guilder bond therefore obliged the municipality to pay 3 percent interest annually to the holder of the document. There is no end time attached to this and so the interest is still paid out today.
Converted, Verbeem therefore thought to be entitled to 552.20 euros, but that expectation was soon tempered at the Middelburg city office. Until 2002, the interest appears to have been paid annually to the then owner(s). It is not known who that was or were.
Rare
On the back of the document is a series of years with the initials of the tax official who pays the interest. That is Wim Tabak, who is still employed by the municipality of Middelburg. He can’t remember this document, but he calls the documents quite rare.
“Every year one, at most two, people came by with such a paper,” he told Omroep Zeeland. “And years went by when no one came at all.”
The bond is no longer very lucrative. Verbeem expected an interest rate of 3 percent for 21 years, but that also turned out to be incorrect. In 1898, the city council decided to lower the interest rate to half a percent.
Alderman Rutger Schonis of the municipality of Middelburg even paid the amount to which Verbeem is entitled in cash: nine euros and eight cents.
