Lost Savings Bonds: The Search Tool Is Gone — Here Is the Real Route Now

General information only. This page explains how the U.S. Treasury handles lost savings bonds today. It cannot search for your bonds — only the Treasury can do that. This page collects nothing and asks for nothing.

Why the old advice is wrong now

Treasury Hunt let you type in a Social Security number or name and see matured, uncashed bonds. It is gone, and the Treasury has announced no successor tool. Plenty of websites — including, at the time this page was checked, the federal government's own USA.gov unclaimed-money page — still link to it, and the links land on the retirement notice. If you followed the standard advice and hit a dead end, that is why. You did nothing wrong.

The real route: FS Form 1048

For a paper savings bond that is lost, stolen, destroyed, or was never received, the Treasury's process is the claim form:

1. Get FS Form 1048 — "Claim for Lost, Stolen, or Destroyed United States Savings Bonds" — from TreasuryDirect.gov, the Treasury's official site. There are versions for people who know their bond serial numbers and for people who do not; use the one that matches what you know.
2. Fill in what you remember. You do not need the exact purchase date — the form itself lets you give a range of dates. Names exactly as they appeared on the bond, the owner's Social Security number, and roughly when and where the bonds were bought all help the Treasury search its records.
3. Get your signature certified as the form instructs — this step is always required, and it is done in person at a bank or similar institution.
4. Mail the form to the address printed on the current form. (Addresses for Treasury forms have changed over the years, and old articles list old addresses — trust the form you just downloaded, not a blog post.)
5. Expect a long wait. These searches are done by hand against Treasury records and take months, not days. Keep copies of everything you send.

The Treasury does not charge a fee for this search or for replacing a bond. If the claim checks out, you choose: the money, or a replacement bond. Replacement EE and I bonds are issued electronically into a TreasuryDirect account — the Treasury no longer prints paper replacements.

The second net: your state's unclaimed property search

Savings bonds earn interest for up to 30 years and then stop. Under the SECURE 2.0 Act (the savings bond provision is at Title 31, Section 3105(f) of the U.S. Code), the Treasury now shares information about long-matured bonds with state unclaimed property offices so states can help reconnect owners. So, alongside the form, search your state's official unclaimed property site by name (Oklahoma's is yourmoney.ok.gov; every state's is free). A matured bond that stopped earning interest years ago does not expire as a claim — final maturity ends the interest, not your right to the money.

Two series notes, from the Treasury: all Series E bonds (sold before 1980) and all Series HH bonds (the last of them matured in August 2024) are past final maturity and earning nothing. If a relative's drawer holds bonds like these, they are worth exactly their redemption value today — no reason to wait, and no growth left to wait for.

If you still have the paper bond

None of the above is needed. A paper EE or I bond you can hold in your hand can generally be cashed at a bank or credit union, or through TreasuryDirect by mail. The hunt-and-form process is only for bonds you cannot produce.