Treasury Hunt Is Closed: What It Was and What Owners Can Use Instead

Treasury Hunt, Treasury's free online search for matured and lost savings bonds, has not been available since September 30, 2025, and no online search has replaced it. The Treasury Hunt page on TreasuryDirect now reads: "As of September 30, 2025, the Treasury Hunt® tool is no longer available."

(TreasuryDirect, read November 11, 2026). So what do owners and heirs use now? The free route is a records search by mail: you file FS Form 1048 (Rev. March 2026), Treasury's claim form for lost, stolen or destroyed bonds, and Treasury searches its own records.

ClaimMyBonds is a private, independent guide, not Treasury, TreasuryDirect or a state, and it runs no federal search. This page covers what Treasury Hunt searched, its dated history and results, why no Treasury source gives a reason for the closure, and the free routes that work today.

For what bonds are worth and how to cash or claim them, start with our independent guide to US savings bonds.

What Was the Treasury Hunt Tool?

Treasury Hunt was a free search tool of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, on TreasuryDirect, that matched a person's details against Treasury's records of matured, unredeemed savings bonds. It was Treasury's own tool, registered as "Treasury Hunt®", and never a private site.

The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is the Treasury bureau that runs savings bonds, and TreasuryDirect is its website. A matured bond has reached final maturity, the date it stops earning interest. An unredeemed bond is one that nobody has cashed.

What Treasury Hunt Searched For and How

Treasury Hunt searched for 3 things: matured savings bonds no longer earning interest, bonds owned by deceased family members, and undeliverable payments returned to Treasury.

Those 3 purposes come from the Fiscal Service release of December 30, 2019, which announced the relaunch. Undeliverable payments are federal payments that never reached the payee. This page covers only the savings bond side.

The search data grew over time. At the December 2019 relaunch, Treasury Hunt matched only matured bonds issued after 1973, and only by Social Security number. The August 2023 upgrade added the owner's name, the co-owner and the complete registration (every name and address printed on the bond) as search data.

It also covered all unredeemed bonds issued since 1957. A match was never a payment, because the owner or heir still had to file a claim with Treasury. Our savings bond lookup guide sets out how owners search now.

Treasury Hunt Timeline, 2001 to 2025

Treasury Hunt ran in 2 periods: from its launch on February 5, 2001 until it was decommissioned in 2017, and from its relaunch in December 2019 until September 30, 2025. The TreasuryDirect timeline records the 2001 launch and the 2017 shutdown.

The 2024 Report to Congress under SECURE 2.0, a report Treasury files each year for 5 years under that 2022 law, describes the relaunch scope and the 2023 upgrade. The table below lists each dated event from Treasury's own sources.

Treasury Hunt history from Treasury sources (checked November 11, 2026).

What Treasury Hunt Found: Treasury's Published Results

After the August 2023 upgrade, Treasury Hunt ran more than 4.4 million searches, found more than 1 million potential matches, and led to more than 24,000 bonds being redeemed. These figures come from the 2024 Report to Congress under SECURE 2.0, dated March 11, 2025.

An earlier Fiscal Service report, dated June 17, 2021, counted the first period after the relaunch. By May 10, 2021, Treasury Hunt had searched 726,642 Social Security numbers and matched 83,778 of them.

Both figures are rounded, so they give no exact success rate. The 2 periods also count different things: the 2021 report counted Social Security numbers searched, while the 2025 report counted searches. The dollar amounts below are bonds redeemed after a match. They are not the value of bonds that remain unredeemed.

Results Treasury published for Treasury Hunt. Amounts are bonds redeemed after a match, not the value of unredeemed bonds.

When and Why Did Treasury Hunt Shut Down?

Treasury Hunt shut down on September 30, 2025, and Treasury has not published a reason. The date comes from the notice on TreasuryDirect's Treasury Hunt page. No Treasury news release and no Federal Register notice announced the closure (checked November 11, 2026).

September 30, 2025: The Closure Notice on TreasuryDirect

TreasuryDirect's Treasury Hunt page now carries only a closure notice. It reads: "As of September 30, 2025, the Treasury Hunt® tool is no longer available."

The notice then gives TreasuryDirect's own guidance: "If you suspect you have an unredeemed lost, stolen, or destroyed United States Savings Bond, please visit https://www.treasurydirect.gov/savings-bonds/forms/ for guidance on how to submit a claim."

The old web address still leads to that notice. On November 11, 2026, treasuryhunt.gov forwarded visitors automatically (an HTTP 302 redirect) to the Treasury Hunt closure notice on TreasuryDirect. The forms page the notice names is where Treasury posts FS Form 1048.

No Official Reason for the Closure

No Treasury source gives a reason for the closure. TreasuryDirect states only the date (checked November 11, 2026). Treasury has not announced a replacement. Any reason you read elsewhere is a claim by someone else, not a Treasury statement.

The most repeated claim, that the SECURE 2.0 Act forced the shutdown, has no support in the law. A Fox TV station report of July 6, 2026 and AI answers in search results repeat it. The savings bond part of SECURE 2.0 is section 122 of Pub.

L. 117-328, division T, enacted December 29, 2022 and codified at 31 U.S.C. 3105(f). Section 122 requires Treasury to share bond owner data with states. It does not mention Treasury Hunt, and it does not require any search tool to close.

Pages That Still Send You to Treasury Hunt

At least 6 pages still send people to Treasury Hunt as of November 11, 2026, 3 of them on TreasuryDirect itself. The other 3 are a federal information site, a state treasurer's page and a personal finance site.

Their wording still presents Treasury Hunt as available. The table below lists each page with the date it was last checked or updated.

Pages that still point to Treasury Hunt; TreasuryDirect's notice governs.

What Replaced Treasury Hunt? Free Routes Owners Can Use Instead

No online search replaced Treasury Hunt. Four free routes work instead. They are a records search on FS Form 1048 by mail, a check with your bank or Treasury for a bond you hold, and your TreasuryDirect account for electronic bonds.

The fourth is a state unclaimed property office, but only for bonds a state physically holds.

Treasury charges no fee, and the forms are free. You may still pay a notary's charge or postage. A notary is an official who confirms your identity and signature.

Which Route Fits Your Situation

The route depends on what you have: a lost bond, a paper bond you are unsure about, an electronic bond, a deceased relative's bonds, or a letter from a state. A sixth case, a bond already in your hands, needs no search at all.

Treasury Retail Securities Services is the Treasury office in Minneapolis that handles mailed savings bond requests. Electronic bonds sit in a TreasuryDirect account, and since October 28, 2026 you can log in to that account only through ID.me, an identity-checking service.

Times are TreasuryDirect's published estimates as of November 11, 2026. The table below matches each situation to its route.

Free routes now that Treasury Hunt is closed (as of November 11, 2026). Treasury charges no fee; the forms are free.

The 4 Details Treasury Needs to Search Without a Serial Number

Without a serial number, Treasury needs 4 details to search its records: purchase month and year, the owner's complete Social Security number, full names, and the address. The serial number is the unique code of letters and digits printed on each paper bond. The 4 details are listed below.

• Month and year of purchase: the specific month and year the bond was bought.
• Complete Social Security number: the owner's full number, not the last 4 digits.
• Full names: every name on the bond, including middle names or initials.
• Address: street, city and state.

These 4 details come from FS Publication 0107 (Rev. August 2022), Treasury's guide to filing a lost bond claim. For a gift bond, one bought by someone other than the owner, FS Form 1048 also asks for the purchaser's Social Security number.

An exact issue date is best, but the form accepts a range of dates when the family does not know the month.

Requesting a Records Search by Mail: 6 Steps

A records search is a claim on FS Form 1048, "Claim for Lost, Stolen, or Destroyed United States Savings Bonds" (Rev. March 2026), mailed to Treasury Retail Securities Services.

The current form is sav1048.pdf on TreasuryDirect, 6 pages long, and Treasury estimates about 20 minutes to complete it. Its federal approval number is OMB 1530-0021. The 6 steps are listed below.

1. Download the form from TreasuryDirect's savings bond forms page.
2. Describe the bonds in Item 1 with the 4 details above, using FS Form 3500, the continuation sheet, for a long list.
3. Have every person named on the bonds sign, or an authorized representative; a court-appointed representative adds letters of appointment dated within one year.
4. Attach a certified death certificate for each deceased registrant, meaning each person named on the bond who has died.
5. Sign in front of a notary or a certifying officer, such as an authorized officer of a bank or credit union.
6. Mail the form to Treasury Retail Securities Services, P.O. Box 9150, Minneapolis, MN 55480-9150.

Relief comes in 2 forms. Treasury replaces Series EE and I bonds with electronic substitute bonds in a TreasuryDirect account, and pays Series HH bonds by direct deposit only.

A bond already at final maturity is paid instead of replaced. A living owner can also name a person to receive information about their bonds on FS Form 5456 (Rev. April 2026).

How Long a Search Takes and the Six-Year Serial Number Rule

TreasuryDirect lists requests to locate lost, stolen or missing savings bonds at 11 months or longer (as of November 11, 2026). On the same page, cashing paper bonds in your own name takes 3 months or longer. Keep a copy of everything you mail.

Late claims need the savings bond serial number. Treasury does not consider a claim filed 6 years or more after a bond's final maturity unless the claimant supplies the serial number. 31 CFR 315.29(c) sets this for Series E, H and other older series, and 31 CFR 353.29(c) for Series EE and HH.

Every lost Series E, H and Savings Note is now past that 6-year point. For paper Series I bonds, claims filed 10 years or more after maturity are barred (31 CFR 360.29(c)).

How Treasury applies the rule when its own digitized records hold the serial number is not published. Old tax records, bond lists or photocopies can show the savings bond serial number.

Which Bonds Treasury's Records Can Still Match

Treasury's digitized records cover bonds issued from October 1957 on, which hold 97% of all matured, unredeemed debt (MUD), as Treasury measures it.

Records from 1935 to September 1957, the other 3% of MUD, had not been digitized as of March 11, 2025 (2024 Report to Congress). Whether they have been digitized since is not published.

A taxpayer ID was required only on bonds issued on or after January 1, 1974 (31 CFR 316.2(c)(1)), and Treasury's systems did not record owner information for older bonds (Fiscal Service report, June 17, 2021), so a Social Security number search could not match them.

The same report puts these older bonds at 11.9% of matured unredeemed bonds and 4.5% of their value. For a pre-1974 bond, give Treasury the full names and the address used at purchase.

Can State Unclaimed Property Offices Search Federal Bond Records Now?

States can receive Treasury's records of long-matured bonds only after signing an information-sharing agreement, and they receive names and addresses, not a searchable bond list. The rule is 31 CFR 323.11, added by 89 FR 102735 on December 18, 2024.

It covers bonds more than 3 years past final maturity that were never redeemed (31 U.S.C. 3105(f)(6)). Owner location, not a public search, is the purpose of the link between SECURE 2.0 and savings bonds.

The data released stays narrow. The final rule releases no Social Security numbers, denominations or serial numbers (preamble of 89 FR 102735). A state may use the names and addresses only to locate owners. It may never use them to escheat the bonds, meaning take legal title to them.

It may not publish or share the data without Treasury's advance written approval (31 CFR 323.11(c)(1) to (3)). Routine use 24, the privacy notice that permits this sharing, has applied since June 10, 2026 (91 FR 25777).

No state or Treasury source names a state with a signed agreement as of November 11, 2026. Reports that federal bond records "moved" into state unclaimed property databases or onto MissingMoney.com have no primary source.

A state can list a federal savings bond only when it physically holds the paper bond, for example one from an abandoned safe-deposit box. Treasury may pay such bonds to the state at its discretion (31 CFR 315.88, 353.88).

Missouri runs the only verified live state name search for paper bonds it holds (checked November 11, 2026). That search covers only Missouri unclaimed savings bonds in the state's custody, not Treasury's records.

Treasury Hunt Look-Alikes, Search Fees and Name Confusion

Treasury Hunt was a legitimate Treasury tool, but any site offering a "Treasury Hunt" search today is not Treasury's, because Treasury's tool is no longer available. Four warning signs separate a look-alike from Treasury's own process. They are listed below.

• A fee to search: TreasuryDirect states, "we charge no fees, nor do we offer gifts for working with our office."
• A web form asking for your full Social Security number or bond serial numbers: Treasury's search runs on a paper form mailed to Treasury.
• A promise to be paid from your bonds: Treasury pays only the registered owner or another entitled person (31 CFR 315.39(b), 353.39(b), 360.39(b)).
• A claim of TreasuryDirect access: Treasury has no approved third-party websites or apps for TreasuryDirect accounts.

Misuse of Treasury names, including "United States Savings Bond", carries a civil penalty of up to $9,956 per use and $49,772 if broadcast (31 U.S.C. 333; 31 CFR 27.3(c), as adjusted by 90 FR 25484).

The FTC Impersonation Rule (16 CFR Part 461) separately bars posing as a government agency. The 4 signs above help you spot savings bond scams of that kind.

Florida's Department of Financial Services runs its own claim search at fltreasurehunt.gov. That site is a state search for unclaimed property Florida holds, not the federal Treasury Hunt.

Other Ways to Look for Lost Savings Bonds

Treasury Hunt was 1 of 4 ways to look for lost savings bonds, and the other 3 still work. They are Treasury's own records search, a family search for a deceased owner's bonds, and a check of paper bonds found at home.

Each route, with its form and time, is compared in our guide on how to find lost or missing savings bonds.

Unclaimed Savings Bonds: 103,064,737 Still Outstanding

103,064,737 matured paper savings bonds were unredeemed on September 30, 2026, counting all series (Fiscal Data). Of these, 82,673,787 were Series EE and 19,751,346 were Series E.

Fiscal Data publishes this piece count, not a dollar total. The reasons no name search exists for unclaimed savings bonds are set out in our guide to them.

A Deceased Relative's Savings Bonds

A deceased owner's bonds are searched on FS Form 1048 with a certified death certificate, and Treasury places a hold on a TreasuryDirect account when told of the death. Who then cashes or keeps the bonds follows the rules for savings bonds after death.

A records search for a relative uses the same 4 details and takes 11 months or longer. Families looking for savings bonds of a deceased parent or relative begin with the death certificate.

Paper Bonds Found at Home

Paper bonds found at home need no search: read the series and issue date, check the value, and cash or claim them. The series letter and issue date are printed on the face of each bond. Every Series E bond stopped earning interest by June 2010.

Our calculator, built on Treasury's published value files, prices paper Series EE and E bonds, and values can change on the 1st of each month. The steps for found old savings bonds start with that check of series and date.

Treasury Hunt Questions

What is the Treasury Hunt tool?

Treasury Hunt was Treasury's free online search for matured savings bonds and returned payments, available from 2001 to 2017 and from December 2019 to September 30, 2025. It is no longer available, and no online search replaced it.

Is the Treasury Hunt tool legit?

Yes, Treasury Hunt was a legitimate Treasury tool, but it closed on September 30, 2025, so any site offering it now is not Treasury's. Treasury charges no search fee. Fees come only from private savings bond recovery services, never from Treasury.

How do I contact TreasuryDirect by phone about lost bonds?

TreasuryDirect's phone number for savings bond questions is 844-284-2676 (toll free), Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time. From outside the US, call +1 (304) 480-6464 (TreasuryDirect contact page, as of November 11, 2026). A phone call does not replace the FS Form 1048 claim.

Can I still search for savings bonds by Social Security number or name?

No: since September 30, 2025 no public tool searches federal savings bond records by Social Security number or name. Treasury searches by mail on FS Form 1048 with the 4 details above. It discloses bond records only to owners, their legal representatives, survivors and certain agencies (31 CFR 323.2(b)).

What was the Treasury Hunt reference number on FS Form 1048?

The reference number belonged to a special version of FS Form 1048 that Treasury Hunt produced for bonds issued in 1974 or later without serial numbers. TreasuryDirect still describes it on its Series HH lost-bond page, but the process ended with the tool. Use the current FS Form 1048 claim for lost savings bonds, Rev. March 2026.

Do unclaimed savings bonds expire?

No: savings bonds never expire and there is no deadline to redeem them, although they stop earning interest at final maturity. That rule comes from the 2024 Report to Congress under SECURE 2.0 and the Treasury regulations in 31 CFR 315 and 353.

A Series E bond issued in 1960, for example, stopped earning at 40 years but can still be cashed. Final maturity by series shows when savings bonds stop earning interest.

Can I claim lost savings bonds without the serial number?

Yes, if you give Treasury the 4 identifying details, unless the claim is filed 6 years or more after final maturity. Then the serial number is required (31 CFR 315.29(c), 353.29(c)).

Did SECURE 2.0 shut down Treasury Hunt?

No: SECURE 2.0 does not mention Treasury Hunt, and Treasury has given no reason for the closure. Section 122 (31 U.S.C. 3105(f)) concerns data sharing with states. The Unclaimed Savings Bond Act (H.R. 4085 / S. 2854, 117th Congress) was not enacted.

Dates and rules checked November 11, 2026, against the Treasury sources named above; read how we check every date and rule.