Show Us Your Old Stock Certificates And Bonds.

Show us your favorites, old, vintage or just cool stock certificates! Background and stories are welcome.

I have 1031 railroad certificates, about 140+ different, most are duplicates and are PRR or from the NYC area. Many still have the transfer slip and stamps. I have more slips and stamps than I do certificates, so these helped me with the stock transfer section of my collection.I have ~10 of the ones below.

The bulk of them were collected by my father-in-law who drove trains in the Boston-Baltimore corridor and retired in 1998. I inherited curator duties for his huge collection of RR memorabilia. A warehouse full. Just missed out on buying a derelict train station a few years back to house the collection as a "museum".




I have a partial book of these:

Here are a few more. Bet ya can't figure out why I like these.

Here's one from the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway Company. Wikipedia mentions an event involving this Company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misso...xas_Railroad

"In 1896, as a publicity stunt set up by William Crush, the Katy crashed two locomotives head-on, pulling loaded trains, at a site that came to be known thereafter as Crush, Texas. The collision occurred before more than 40,000 spectators, three of whom died (and several were injured) by debris from the exploding boilers. Ragtime composer and pianist Scott Joplin, who was performing in the area at the time, commemorated the event in his piano piece, "The Great Crush Collision March" (which he dedicated to the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway)."

The Certificate bears a Revenue Stamp issued by Great Britain.

You specifically mentioned stock certificates, so I'll leave bond certificates for another time.


Here are a few of my nicer ones.

American Express Co. showing the geometric star cancel frequently misattributed as a postal cancel, certificate signed by Henry Wells and William Fargo of Wells Fargo fame.





Early stock certificate with R36a (CV $500).





Attractive vignettes.





Red and green is always a great color combo.





Very scare 25-cent Warehouse Receipt part perforate (R50b, CV = $1,100).





Very unusual, a completely holographic (handwritten) stock certificate.





Some others:

Gettinold: Cool info

Revenuecollector: Bonds are good too!

I don't think I've seen a hand written certificate of shares quite like that one before.

Allentown and Lehigh Valley Traction Co. Un-issued.



1894 Hestonville, Mantua and Fairmont Passenger Railroad company. canceled May 19 1896.



PRR 5% gold bond Series 1968 General Mortgage.

Thanks for starting this thread jconey! I love these old securities and have many thick albums full of them (three devoted to RRs alone).

I'll post a few of my personal faves. Btw, if you have any duplicates PM me and maybe we can do some trading!

GregAlex: That sounds like a real good possibility! I know we do have a good number of duplicates. I've discovered more unique issues just recently, some with duplicates. My son is currently going through and scanning them along with other stuff including 10's of thousands of RR and public transit photos that were collected by my Father-in-Law. Literally 45 3" to 5" binders and 40+ large boxes of folders of photos, slides, negatives, etc. I inherited curator-ship of the "family" collection of public transit memorabilia. Most of which is trolley and railroad. He started out on Tugs in NY Harbor but wound up driving trains in the Balt-Boston corridor until he retired in the late 90's.

I'll tell my son to try and concentrate on the stock certificates as much as possible.

Well, this thread has gone silent for a while, but I picked up a few that might be of interest. This batch is all specimen certificates.

Very attractive. Sadly, like many other items, paper ephemera have been rendered obsolete by the digital age. 50-100 years from now, people will have no context as to the function and form, the same was with postal mail and cursive handwriting.