Part of the reason Yale holds this artifact is due to Prof. Geert Rouwenhorst, who researched Dutch financial instruments. If I recall correctly, he actually co

Part of the reason Yale holds this artifact is due to Prof. Geert Rouwenhorst, who researched Dutch financial instruments. If I recall correctly, he actually collected a few decades of interest on behalf of Yale during the purchase of the bond back in 2003, and even had an ancient ledger updated to reflect the payout. I still consider the more 'recent' 19th century bonds he passed around in class to be the coolest show-and-tell item ever from a professor.