Buckle up! Scripophily magazine brings you into the world of antique stocks and bonds

Compelling tales, business plot twists and memorable personalities keep you spellbound. Scripophily magazine uncovers the stories of historic and artistic securities. In addition, reports from the auction markets help you to stay up-to-date. This periodical is the flagship of The International Bond and Share Society (IBSS) and appears three times a year.

In Scripophily magazine you'll find out about the latest discoveries. This rare share certificate realized £160 at SPINK's May 2020 auction. The most famous restaurant not only in Paris but also in the world, Maxim's was in 1926 owned by this British company. 

Scripophily magazine is the world’s most comprehensive and insightful publication for passionate collectors and researchers of antique securities. Its 2020 August issue brings 50 pages of scripophily news, in depth articles, pictures of collector friends, auction reports and quality images of stunning, historic and rare stocks and bonds. 

Here is a summary on the topics brought in the latest issue :

• The History of Worldwide Scripophily Auctions, a review of Tim Welo's book 
• Buying on Time, Was this share certificate bought on margin?, about the Lake Superior Iron and Chemical Company (NY)
• Western Union Telegraph Company, letter to the editor about Gandhi and India's independence struggle 
• Collectors Clearinghouse, learn about the Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat Company
• Nothing New about FaceTime or Zoom, the American Televue Company
• Dow Jones, a History of Dow Jones Averages Since 1884, review of Dr. Peter Jones' book  
• Large Scale Snubbing went on in Cleveland in the 1920s, brings the story on The Gabriel Snubber Manufacturing Company
• Misadventures in Mining : Dutch Investors and R. G. Dun at the Caribou Mine 
• A Visit to the New York Stock Exchange Archives
• (Kaiser) Ferdinand's Nordbahn
• Watermarks in Scripophily, part 1 introduction
• The Dow Jones Company and its Averages, extract from Dr Peter Jones' book
• Pacific Mail Steamship, idem
• Johan Colenbrander and Colenbranders Matabeleland Development Company
• My British Railway Treasure, a testimony on collecting early British railway scripophily

Scripophily magazine, August 2020, features on its front cover a Isaac Newton signed document subscribing to shares in the South Sea Company. This unique and historic document from 1720 recently emerged at an American auction. 

Subscribing to Scripophily magazine brings you valuable free extras :

1. The IBSS Directory brings you in contact with fellow collectors. Many of those are experts in their field, often share common interests with you, and possibly live nearby. The Directory contains members from more than 40 countries.
2. The Newsletter, so you may keep up with what is going on.
3. Access to all content on the IBSS website, including digital versions of previous issues of Scripophily magazine, the online forum, special theme galleries, and the like.
4. Newsflashes on the website focus on hot topics that can't wait for the next issue of the magazine.
5. Get extra credibility : being listed as a member is a good reference in any deals made remotely with parties previously unknown.

A 1-year subscription only costs £20 or $32 or €25. The magazine is published by IBSS. More info : https://scripophily.org/membership/join/

F.L.

Related links

• International Bond and Share Society 
• What is Scripophily, a quick introduction

2400 scripophily lots coming up at HWPH's home base

Matthias Schmitt has scheduled its next double-session sale for 12 and 13 September 2020. With his team he brought together over 2400 lots of scripophily and related documents.

The first sale is a live auction held this time at Zorneding-Pöring, HWPH's home base. The next day an online auction takes place. Both sales offer historic and beautiful antique stocks and bonds from all continents.  

La Bourse - Journal et Banque Édouard Blée et Cie.

Édouard Blée and Pierre Nicolai founded this company in 1883 to operate a bank. The company also published a financial journal "La Bourse". The share's underprint shows a large crowded scene in front of the Paris stock exchange. This rare 2 Parts d'Intérêt certificate dates from 1884. Lot 153 in the auction welcomes bids from €250 onwards.

The emergence of the stock exchanges made a great impact on modern life. No doubt, historic shares and bonds related to bourses are fascinating. HWPH's upcoming sale includes several of these : 

• L65, Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., common shares certificate, specimen, 2001
• L90, Bourse Khédiviale du Caire, Lstg. 10 share, 1903, at the time the most important bourse in the Middle East and Africa
• L195 / L196,  £100 / £1000 debenture, The Stock Exchange, London, 1899
• L153 La Bourse, with large vignette of the bourse de Paris, see image above

The South Sea Company was founded in 1711 as The Governor and Company of Merchants of Great Britain Trading to the South Seas and other Parts of America, and for the encouragement of the Fishery. It obtained a monopoly to trade slaves from Africa in the Spanish colonies across the Atlantic. This share was issued in 1720 at the peak of the South-Sea-Bubble when for the first time in history many small and large investors lost everything in a speculative rush at the stock market. L626 is expected to realize €3,000. 

The sale features a significant number of securities from the earliest joint-stock companies. Some examples : 

• Sparking the Industrial Revolution the Iron Bridge Company "for building a Bridge across the River Severn" was founded in 1777. Its share is signed by ironmaster Abraham Darby III who played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution. A rare and top scripophily item, L628 starts at €18,000.
• L631 consists of one of the oldest German shares, a share in the Compagnie Royale Prussienne de Bengale, 1759. It is one of the earliest shares related to the Indian subcontinent as well.  
• An amazing copper print with vignettes of ships at sea and a view on the city of Sevilla is presented as L632. This share from the Real Compañia de San Fernando de Sevilla dates from 1748.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra gave its first concert in 1781 in the Gewandhaus. The ensemble would welcome performers such as Mozart and Liszt. From 1835 to 1847 Felix Mendelssohn was the orchestra's music director. This share from the Neues Gewandhaus in Leipzig was issued in 1884 to finance the building of a new concert hall.  It was designed by architect Martin Gropius, a friend of Mendelssohn. The new premises are illustrated in the vignette. A memorial for Mendelssohn was unveiled in front of the concert hall in 1892. Because Mendelssohn came from a Jewish family the Nazi regime ordered the removal of the statue. A bombing destroyed in 1944 the New Gewandhaus. The city of Leipzig opened again a new Gewandhaus in 1981. A bronze replica of the original Mendelssohn statue was presented in 2008. L452, a multicolor printing feat by Giesecke & Devrient, starts at €400. 

Both auctions include together more than 900 German scripophily lots  :

• Interested in German automobile history ? What about Porsche, see lots 284, 285, 286, 358 and 1856. A rare Megola-Motoren-AG share from the 1920s, L341, may find a new owner at €270.
• The Königlich Bayerisch privilegirte Krystallglas-Fabrik Theresienthal was the first joint-stock company in Niederbayern. Theresienthal was, and still is, famous for its luxury glass. Founded in 1836 the company counted among its customers King Ludwig II. Its share, issued in 1841, is one of the earliest known glass scripophily objects. Extremely rare, bids invited at €3,500. L637
• There are many flags to see in the auction catalog. The share from the Ruder-Gesellschaft Sparta e.V. Berlin-Tegel is calling with the rowing club's flag. L1753
• A map of West Germany adorns a modern specimen stock certificate, L1900, from the HCA Hypotheken-Computer-Analyse AG

The two auctions count four bonds from the McDonald's Corporation : L58, L59, L2164 and L2165. The vignette shown here is different from what we usually see on McDonald's scripophily. It is a nice example of McDonald's image building capacities. In 2011 the company held a mega job fair in the USA. Business Insider, Apr 28, 2011, wrote "It's Harder To Get A Job At McDonald's Than It Is To Get Into Harvard". McDonald's was looking then for 50,000 new workers. They hired about 62,000 people after receiving a million applications for those positions - an acceptance rate of 6.2%. Enjoy your meal ! 

There is a lot more to discover in HWPH's auction catalogs. The live auction concludes with meeting for EDHAC members. Here are the details of the event:

• Dates
• 12 September 2020, Zorneding, Germany, public auction
• 13 September 2020, online auction
• Further info and catalogs, see here on HWPH. 
• Live bidding is possible through Invaluable.com, see here, where you can find high quality images of the lots.

F.L.

HWPH includes 270 lots of Russian scripophily. A dedicated PDF catalog, in Russian, is available here.  The vignette shown is a detail from L843, a 1902 share in the AG für Walfang und Fischerei im Stillen Ocean Graf H. H. Keyserling & Cie.

River Edge, New Jersey, sees over 1000 numismatic lots going over the block

Archives International Auctions offers more than 1,000 lots of banknotes, coins, scripophily and security printing ephemera at its sale this Tuesday, 14th May 2019. This public and online event takes place at AIA's new offices in River Edge, New Jersey.

Interesting, the auction includes over 600 lots of stunning, antique stocks and bonds. One of the many highlights is this ultra rare production specimen IPO stock certificate from the McDonald's Corporation. 

Richard and Maurice McDonald founded McDonald's in 1940 as a restaurant in San Bernardino, California. It was Ray Kroc, who joined McDonald's in 1954, that set the stage for national and global expansion. 

In 1961, Kroc had McDonald's file for a trademark on a new logo, an overlapping, double-arched "M" symbol. The logo was used from 1960 until 1968, and appears on this stock certificate. 

Under Kroc McDonald's initiated its first public stock offering at $22.50 per share on April 21, 1965. If you'd have purchased 100 common McDonald's shares during that initial public offering, your investment would now be worth over $12 million (source www.investopedia.com).

 

Coming from the original archives of the American Bank Note Company, this certificate represents a milestone in MacDonald's history and forms a crucial asset for collector's of historic marketing artefacts. Bids for Lot 683 are invited from $525. 

Besides American scripophily, the sale includes antiques securities from China, Mexico, Israel, Russia, and much more states. The US railroad section is unusual weighty.

This antique share from the Wildwood and Delaware Bay Short Line Railroad Company was issued in 1915.  Its designers gave it a superb vignette showing "the 1995 passing a signal bridge". The railroad was opened for traffic Dec. 12, 1912 . Indeed, this was a "short" line. Its 4.20 miles long line ran from Wildwood to Wildwood Junction, New Jersey. There, it connected with the Atlantic City Rail Road. Lot 931 in the sale. 

Much more wonderful antique securities can be seen in the auctioneer's catalog. Practical info :

• Date : May 14, 2019
• Location : River Edge, New Jersey
• More info : see here, live and absentee bidding there, 
• PDF auction catalog : here 

F.L.

Stocks are hip and shares are old school

Earlier, I explained that "share certificate" and "stock certificate" mean the same. I also believe different kinds of securities have evolved because of changing environments. Well, here is an example of adaptive evolution in scripophily. 

Check out the following two certificates :

• double-click their images to enlarge them, 
• and look for similarities and differences.

certificate No 1

Image courtesy : Geert Leemeijer 

certificate No 2

Image courtesy : Geert Leemeijer

This is an odd couple

Both look like standard certificates. They also resemble each other :

• Both are issued by The "Shell" Transport & Trading Company, Ltd. 
• Both are printed by Blades, East & Blades Ltd.  
• And both state a capital of £43,000,000.

Yet, there is something strange about this pair. Did you notice that the first one is issued as a £1 ordinary share, and the second one as a £1 ordinary stock certificate ? You can verify this in these details.

detail from certificate No 1

detail from certificate No 2

Certificate No 1 was issued almost ten years earlier than certificate No 2. That raises the question why change the lettering from "share" to "stock" ? Why would a company want this : there is no change in the capital structure, and after all stock and share mean the same thing.

A matter of modern language ?

Geert Leemeijer aka Stockold Scripophily brought these two examples under attention in the Collectible Stocks & Bonds Facebook group. Geert suggested that over time the term stock certificate became more popular than share certificate. The different lettering on these securities was ".. a matter of modern language".

Here is an overview of the Shell examples provided by Geert with the date of issue and the stated capital :

• shares
• 1920 - £23,000,000 - 20 ordinary £1 bearer shares , blue
• 1925 - £43,000,000 - 5 ordinary £1 bearer shares, brown
• 1929 - £43,000,000 - ordinary £1 registered shares, blue
• stocks
• 1937 - £43,000,000 - ordinary £1 registered shares, blue
• 1937 - £43,000,000 - 1 ordinary £1 bearer share, red
• 1954 - £88,000,000 - ordinary £1 registered shares, blue
• 1957 - £113,000,000 - ordinary £1 registered shares, blue

Two of these are displayed above, the others are grouped in the paste-up image below. The set illustrates the transition from share to stock for the Shell company.

"Shares" in the upper row, "stocks" below.

The brothers Marcus and Sam Samuel founded The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company in 1897.
Their father imported and sold sea-shells and that's how the "Shell" company got its name. 

Image courtesy : Geert Leemeijer

Shell is not the only one

Other British companies also favoured stocks above shares. The UK section of Tabak-Peter shows the following examples :

• British-American Tobacco Ltd
• The Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain and Ireland) Ltd. 

Earlier certificates from these companies are printed as shares and later ones as stocks.

Another example is the J. Lyons & Company Ltd.  J. Lyons started as a spin off from the Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco company at the end of the 19th century. The company expanded into a chain of teashops, ran high class restaurants and started to manufacture biscuits and later ice cream.

J. Lyons & Company, Limited

7% Preference "shares" of £1, 1923

The red stamp on the certificate, see below, tells us that 

The Shares referred to herein were converted into stock on the 24th June, 1940

J. Lyons developed original ideas about what the future of business could be like. After World War II they supported the EDSAC computing project at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory. In 1959 J. Lyons built their own computer, called Lyons Electronic Office I. Based on the EDSAC design, LEO I handled the company's accounts and logistics.

J. Lyons & Company Limited

7% Cumulative Preference "stocks" of £1, 1958

PS : Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worked 

as a food research chemist for the company around the 1950s.

UK stocks and shares in the Turbulent Thirties

Google's Ngram viewer displays charts that show how often terms, or phrases, occur in a corpus of books over a preselected number of years. The Y-axis shows the percentages of references to each term from all terms Google has indexed for a year (X-axis) in the entire corpus.

Google Ngram viewer shows a decline for the term
share certificate from the 1930s till the early 1940s.
double-click image to enlarge

The corpus used in the chart is British English. It consists of books in the English language published in Great Britain. The chart illustrates a decline for the term share certificate over a period from the 1930s till the early 1940s (blue line). Meanwhile stock certificate saw an increase at the end of the 1930s. You can also check the same with the American English corpus, but the share certificate pattern is not repeated in that graph. According to Google Ngram's data, the term share certificate became more popular again from the 1960s.

Apparently during the 1930s it was trendy to speak of stock certificates in the UK. In this period a number of British companies preferred to market their securities as stock certificates instead of share certificates. Possibly this can be explained by the increase of intercontinental (American) aviation, radio, and film. A matter of adapting modern language.

F.L.

Related links

• Shell's history pages 
• Shares and stocks, bearer and registered certificates 
• Google's Ngram 

Scripopily.Fi - Auction 16

Aktiebolaget Hotel Restaurant, English: Hotel Restaurant Company

1 Share of 1000 Finnish Mark, 1900, Helsingfors (Helsinki)

double-click image to enlarge

• Date: until 22 September 2013
• Place: not applicable, this is an online event
• Further info, see here

F.L.

Digest of scripophily readings VI

New online scripophily articles and references, September 2012

AHM brings our mining past back alive

Archivo Historico Minero is an online project, in Spanish. The site contains a large image database related to coal mining in Spain, but also gold and iron mines, marble quarries and lots of other mining sites and related events from all over the world. Numerous photographs are provided by many contributors. You can find here the main link to this project. Also, interesting for scripophily collectors, there is a section Acciones mineras with lots of images of mining stocks and bond certificates. You can find it there. A great initiative and anyone can help contributing images and related stories.

Telephone and telegraph histories from South America

In a series of books, published in the 1920s, Victor M. Berthold of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, discusses South America's telephone and telegraphy history featuring several early telecom companies :

• History of the telephone and telegraph in Brazil, 1851-1921
• History of the telephone and telegraph in Chile, 1851-1922
• History of the telephone and telegraph in Colombia, 1865-1921
• History of the telephone and telegraph in the Argentine republic, 1857-1921
• History of the telephone and telegraph in Uruguay, 1886-1925

And guess what.. at least two of these books are available online! You can find the Argentine part here and the Brazilian part there. On the left, you'll find a link for downloading a PDF version.

Does anybody know if the other parts have been put online as well ?

Why Wall Street, why Bulls and why Bears ?

CNBC has put online some short videos about the history of Wall Street. Find the answers on the following questions in these minute videos :

• Do you know why Wall Street is called Wall Street?
• Why are optimists called Bulls? 
• Why are pessimists called Bears?




double-click to enlarge

der aktiensammler
In addition to the articles above, the latest August 2012 No.4/12 issue of der aktiensammler magazine, contains the following stories (in German) :

• McDonald's : Fast food at its best
• Die älteste Siemens-Aktie: Ein US-Papier aus dem Jahr 1883, in English: The oldest Siemens share (The Siemens' Regenerative Gas Lamp Company)
• Die Rentenmark - der Sanierer der Hyperinflation, English: The Rentenmark - remedy for hyperinflation (part 10 in a series on the evolution of money)
• Dampflok-Tradition: Nordhausen-Wernigeroder Eisenbahn AG, or in English: the Nordhausen-Wernigeroder Railway Company
• Zwischen Wupper und Ruhr: Bergische Kleinbahnen AG, freely translated: Between the Wupper and the Ruhr (river) runs the Berg Light Railway Company
• Trabrennbahn Hamburg-Bahrenfeld: Getrabt wird bald woanders, about the Hamburg-Bahrenfeld harness racing track
• Friedrich Eberts Zwangsanleihe: Verjährte Massenpapiere, English: Friedrich Ebert's Forced Loan - piles of expired bonds
• Die Ebay-Spekulationswelle flacht deutlich ab, in English: Speculation wave on Ebay is clearly weakening
• other periodical topics : Auction Reviews, Book Reviews, Collector's Portrait, Events Calendar, Classifieds

F.L.