Would a baby appreciate savings as a gift? Maybe sooner than you think…

The quest to find an unusual baby gift set off another strange resonance a couple of days ago. I came across a site promoting the idea of giving a US Treasury bond as a present for a baby. This reminded me of coming across the UK equivalent while sorting through the traces of my own childhood: some National Savings Certificates which I had been given as a child. So I dug them out and had a closer look.

The thing which struck me for the first time, just as I was about to scan the book for this post, was that the first certificate was bought on the day after I was born. It was bought in Bromley, which makes it seem most likely that it was bought by my grandparents who lived near there.

I don’t think I’d even realised who had given me the original present. Obviously, I would not have been personally conscious of this gift until several years later, by which time somebody had added to the pot with a few more certificates. Perhaps the same grandparents had continued the tradition for a while? Investing in my future…

But I certainly do remember the book containing the certificates from my childhood. The baby may not have appreciated it, but the child certainly did! I can distinctly remember the eternity which was represented by the wording on the certificate stating that the 15 shillings would have grown to be a whole pound (and thruppence in the days when that I was a wonderful coin?) eventually — if I could wait a whole ten years. A pound seemed a lot of money. But ten years was an even bigger concept and almost impossible to grasp.

That was back in 1955. Ten years came and went. The older child and the teenager never cashed in the certificates. I wonder whether that was because a pound did not seem worth having, even then (under half a vinyl LP, I think). Or was it because, as now, these things already seemed more like talismans from the past and more valuable as mementoes of wishes for the future given with love?

I look at these certificates half a century later and remember now the people who gave them and the child who was fascinated by them. From being simple money they have become a very personal minor treasure.