Man Discovers Grandfather's SBI Shares Bought in 1994, Here's the Current Value

(This article has been updated after original poster’s correction.)

Imagine waking up one day to discover that your grandparents once bought shares that are now worth a fortune, and you still have them because they never sold them. Well, not to get anyone’s hopes up, but a Chandigarh doctor found himself in this fortunate position. Out of the blue, he discovered that his grandfather had bought SBI (State Bank of India) shares worth Rs. 500 in 1994. To his surprise, he found the share certificate issued back then, indicating that they had never been sold.

Taking to social media, the pediatric surgeon, Dr. Tanmay Motiwala, initiated what would soon become a viral post, titled “The power of holding equity.” He reminisced, “My grandparents had purchased SBI shares worth 500 ₹ (Rs. 500) in 1994. They had forgotten about it. In fact, they had no idea why they purchased it and if they even held it.” Motiwala further revealed, “I found some such certificates while consolidating family’s holdings in a place. (Already had sent for converting them to Demat).”

As expected, his post gained traction, sparking a flurry of reactions from the online community.

Initially, he boasted about the share’s current value skyrocketing ‘750’ times, but later backtracked, deleting the post due to an error. “So the share price opened at a premium at IPO listing and the buying price would be 5000 and not 500. I didn’t know this part as i calculated on face value based on certificate I found,” he clarified.

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He also highlighted that the ending value he mentioned earlier, that is Rs. 3.75 lakhs, remains the same. “I guess the underlying message was the power of holding equity over long time (if u get it right) and not the maths behind it or bragging anything,” Dr. Motiwala ended.

In the now-deleted post, he elaborated on the lengthy process of converting the physical share certificates into his Demat account. According to SEBI, anyone holding physical share certificates must first convert them into electronic format before trading or transferring the shares.

Meanwhile, he currently has no plans to sell the SBI shares as he doesn’t need the cash at present.

Soon, comments poured in with one writing, “3.76 lakhs may be small amount, still costs a small entry level car. I think 500 rupees was monthly salary of a government teacher in 1994. Nowadays it’s around 40000. So it has definitely increased much more than people’s earnings.”

Another shared their own experience, saying, “It happened with me too, my grandfather had 500 shares of SBI, he was am employee, somehow after my father’s death, I got these bonds I was 17 later went to nearer share broker and after some procedure we were able to sell, this how I started to invest in equity.” Meanwhile, some users raised questions about the accuracy of the growth rate calculations.

Nevertheless, since being shared, the post has garnered a whopping 886K views on the platform (as at the time of publishing the article), captivating the attention of many.