A Dutch water board still pays interest on dike bonds sold in 1638 and 1648, and Yale collected 12 years of it in 2015

On 31 December 1624 ice and high water broke the Lek river dike near Tull en 't Waal, and the flood reached Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The Lekdijk Bovendams water board raised 23,000 guilders that year by selling bonds to wealthy citizens, and it issued more later. In 1648, the month the Treaty of Münster was signed, it sold a 1,000-guilder bond to Niclaes de Meijer, a canon of the Oudemunster church in Utrecht, promising 50 guilders a year forever. The rate was later halved. The bond was payable to the bearer and passed from holder to holder; payments were written on the parchment until 1943 and then on an attached sheet. Yale's Beinecke Library bought it at auction in 2003. Professor Geert Rouwenhorst collected the interest owed from 1977 to 2003. In 2015 curator Timothy Young collected twelve years more, 132 euros, from the board's successor, De Stichtse Rijnlanden. Most of the bonds were bought back over the centuries. Guinness World Records lists one as the oldest bond still paying interest. Two, from 1638 (3,200 guilders at 2.5 percent) and 1765, sit in the Amsterdam stock exchange's historical archive. The board paid their interest at a ceremony at Euronext Amsterdam in September 2024. NOS reported that the oldest surviving bond is held by the New York Stock Exchange.