April sees a new Spink London auction of world bonds & share certificates

SPINK's Bonds and Shares Department has put its latest sale of 2022 online. The auctioneer offers over 600 antique securities from all continents. This online auction ends at 11AM, April 19, 2022. One of the highlights in the auction is this China Mercantile Co. share from the Qing dynasty, L(ot) 102.

The China Mercantile Co. was founded in 1903 as a trading and holding company. The company owned a bank, a porcelain factory, and an export freight company. San Fransico was one its major destinations. The company traded in Chinese and oriental products, tea, silk goods, baskets, brooms, brushes, brass goods, jewelry and art goods. This $20 shares certificate, printed in London by Gilbert & Rivington, dates from 1905 and shows two flags : the Qing dynasty flag with dragon, and possibly the company flag. Rare, L102 

Scripophily from the UK is richly represented. More than 170 lots are divided in separate sections: aviation, bridges/docks/piers, commercial & industrial, hotels & entertainment, mining, motors & cycles, railways & engineering, shipping & shipbuilding. Some of the many interesting items are: 

• L258 is a stock certificate in the Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway, issued in 1890, with vignette and embossed seal of early locomotive. 
• Shares certificates from The Fairey Aviation Company Limited are rarely seen. The company built biplane torpedo bombers and other aircraft. Its share, L282 in the sale, was issued in 1956, a year before Fairey built the Rotodyne vertical takeoff airliner. 
• Roach River Oyster Fishery Company, Limited, 1913, vignette and fine embossed seal of fishing boat, L406 

The UK Mining section consists of 51 lots. This is L323, a 5 shares certificate from the St. Gennys Mining Company, St. Gennys, North Cornwall. Printed on vellum and issued in 1835, this is an early and striking example of using guilloches as a security printing feature. 

The auctions includes stocks and bonds from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and South America. Dedicated sections contain scripophily from the USA, Confederate States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

New Zealand counts 17 lots in the sale. This is L65, a bilingual 5 shares certificate from 1904 in The New Zealand Consolidated Gold Mines, Limited. Maori warriors adorn this print by Eden Fisher & Co. 

There is lots more to discover in this sale, so here are the details :

• Location : this is an Internet only sale
• Date:  Apr 19, 2022, 11 AM
• Further info : see here , PDF catalog there 

F.L.

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An Albatros from Ukraine

Alexander Kamenka was born in 1888 in Odessa, Ukraine. Because of the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War he fled with film producer Joseph Ermolieff to France. In Montreuil near Paris, they established in 1920 a film production company. 

In 1922 Ermolieff leaves Paris to continue his film work in Germany. Kamenka stays and founds a new company, the Société Anonyme des Films Albatros. Co-founders are Maurice Hache and Noë Bloch, the latter also being a refugee from Russia. 

Société Anonyme des Films "Albatros" 

Ordinary share of 100 Francs, 1924, printed by Imp. Richard 

Several of Albatros' first films were directed by Victor Tourjansky : 1922 Nuit de carnaval, 1923 Calvaire d'amour, 1924 La Dame masquée. Tourjansky came from an artistic family in Kyiv. He had fled to Yalta, Crimea, during the Russian revolution. And after Lenin nationalized in 1919 the Soviet film industry he came to France with Ermolieff and his group of actors, cinematographers and directors.

The Albatros films were "silent" films. Films with recorded sound and dialogues were technically not possible to produce till the end of the 1920s. Silent-film actors emphasized body language and facial expression. Onscreen titles were used for explaining dialogues and actions. The title writer fulfilled a key function in addition to the scenario writer who created the story. 

Alexander Kamenka  (1888, Odessa - 1969, Paris) was the son of Boris Abramovich Kamenka (1855, Kiev - 1942). His father was an entrepreneur and banker in the Russian Empire. Boris Kamenka joined the board of several companies including the Azov-Don Bank and the Taganrog Metallurgical Company.  

image : Cinémagazine 31 Dec 1926 

Other Albatros movies from that period are La Maison du mystère, 1923, shot by, inter alia, cinematographer Fédote Bourgasoff (b. 1890, Lokhvitsia, Ukraine) and Kean, 1924, starring Ivan Mosjoukine and his wife Nathalie Lissenko. Born in Nikolayev, Ukraine, 1884, Lissenko left Russia in 1920 with her husband.

Other important film makers of the era working with Alexander Kamenka's Albatros Films included Jean Epstein, Jacques Feyder, Marcel L'Herbier and René Clair. 

Alexander Kamenka produced in 1924 Le Lion des Mogols. The film directed by Jean Epstein and co-written by Ivan Mosjoukine was a success. Mosjoukine, the star of the Albatros studios, played the main role together with his wife Nathalie Lissenko. The actors fancy costumes and this movie poster were designed by Boris Bilinsky. He won a gold medal for that at the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Decorative Arts. Bilinsky, a Russian Civil War refugee, was born in Bender, Moldova.

image : Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe, films from the "Albatros" catalogue 

At the end of the 1920s sound film made its entrance. Only well into the 1930s the Paris studios became fully sound-equipped. Many French sound movies were shot in Germany where film studios were faster to adopt the new technology. 

It was a difficult time for Kamenka's Albatros company. Cagliostro, coproduced in 1929 with Wengeroff-Film and starring the German actor Hans Stüwe was still a silent movie. An interesting trivia is that Universal Pictures planned a remake of it with Boris Karloff in the title role, but the script was rewritten into The Mummy.

Facsimile signature of Alexander Kamenka, Managing and Artistic Director of Films "Albatros" 

In 1930 Albatros produces Le procureur Hallers, a sound film. It was made in the same year in the same Berlin studio by director Robert Wiene as a French language version of Wiene's Der Andere. La porteuse de pain from 1934 stars actor Fernandel.  Le Messager, a sound film from 1937 directed by Raymond Rouleau, was one of Albatros' last movie productions and featured French top actors Jean Gabin and Bernard Blier. 

With the outbreak of World War II, Kamenka winds up the company. For the second time in his life, his home country, now France, goes through a war.

After WWII Alexander Kamenka organizes a new film production company, the Société des Films Alkam. He produces Les Frères Bouquinquant, 1948, Le mystère Barton, 1949, Coupable?, 1951, and several more movies. His son, Sacha Kamenka, born in 1910, will also become a movie producer.

The origin of the company name Films "Albatros" is not clear. Some sources refer to the the name of a boat which brought some of the fugitives from Russia. Besides adopting the image of the albatros as its symbol, the company took the motto "Debout dans la tempête" : Upright in the storm.

F.L.

Related links 

• Albatros et l'École Russe de Paris 
• Dictionnaire du cinéma français (archive.org)

Previous posts

• Use alternative search terms when searching digital publications 
• The most valuable scripophily item hammered in 2020 

FHW presents unique stocks and bonds from the Austro-Hungarian Empire

FHW's upcoming auction takes place on February 26, 2022 in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. The town is home to both the world-famous Jägermeister distillery and the headquarters of the Freunde Historischer Wertpapiere.  

The sale includes 1910 lots of scripophily: antique share certificates and bonds from all continents will go under the hammer. Large sections include the Austro-Hungarian Empire, USA, Germany pre 1945, Germany DM era, Russia and the Baltic States, and China.

The Zillertal Railway is one of the most popular attractions in Tyrol. Its line opened in 1902 and runs along the Ziller river between Jenbach and Mayrhofen. Tourists and railway enthusiasts from all over the world enjoy a ride with the company's steam operated trains. This founder share, issued in 1903, designed in lovely Art Nouveau style, features vignettes from Jenbach, Zell am Ziller and Fügen. L(ot) 497 in the auction, Zillerthalbahn AG, starts at €1,500

The k. u. k. Doppelmonarchie, aka the Austro-Hungarian Empire, existed between 1867 and 1918. The "kaiserlich und königlich" refers to "imperial (Austria)" and "royal (Hungary)".  The state comprised Austria, Hungary and parts of todays Italy, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Ukrain. As such it was the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire at over 620,000 km2. 

The sale features 350 k.u.k. lots including a lovely Zillerthalbahn share, image shown above. Some more examples from other Austro-Hungarian certificates are:

• Actiengesellschaft der Liesinger Bräuerei, share from 1872, wide vignette of the brewery buildings, L153. 
• Several hotel companies are included in the the k.u.k. section such as 
• L164, Actien-Gesellschaft Hotel Goldenes Lamm, 1872, lodgings vignette in the underprint 
• US President Theodore Roosevelt once stayed in the Hotel Krantz, L272 and L273
• The luxury Grandhotel Pupp is located in Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), Czech Republic, and can be admired in the movies Last Holiday, starring Queen Latifah, and Casino Royale, with James Bond. L274 
• Railway collectors will appreciate the tens of railway companies that are included in this section. Some examples are: 
• Grazer Tramway-Gesellschaft, L264, 
• Innsbrucker Mittelgebirgsbahn, L279, and, 
• one of the highlights in the auction, L310, K. K. Priv. Prager Eisenbahngesellschaft, Prague, share from 1828, one of the oldest railway companies in continental Europe.

Included in the Austro-Hungarian section is this Spar- und Kredit-Verein des Janus share. This bank was formed by the Janus wechselseitige Lebensversicherung-Anstalt, a mutual life insurance business, to provide financial services to its members. The amazing vignette shows a portrait of Janus with the two faces. This Roman god controlled the beginning and ending of conflicts. The certificate, issued in 1914, was produced by M. Salzer, one of the oldest printing companies of Austria. Matthäus Salzer (1799-1878) expanded the printing works of the Salzer family into a factory. He bought in 1866 the Carl Ueberreuter printing house. L430 in the auction starts at €200 

The auction includes two German scripophily sections presented by more than 400 lots : 

1. Germany before 1945, lot range 1142 through 1429, and 
2. Germany after 1945 'DM era', range 1430 - 1620. 
3. On top of that you can add the "50% vom letzten Ausruf" section, range 695 - 1141, which contains many German items unsold in previous auctions but now listed at 50% of the original start price.

The printed (PDF) catalog contains indexes on themes and German regions. The online sites provide key word search functions. I tried the word Magdeburg and found more than twenty lots such as L943, a rare 200 Thaler share from 1872 in the Magdeburger Brückebau-Anstalt in Buckau bei Magdeburg with corner vignettes of bridges.

Vignettes on antique securities often display smoking chimneys alluding to productivity and profitability. Being a child of its time, this specimen share from the MEMBRAN Aktiengesellschaft für Finanzinformationssysteme delivers the same message by means of a then expensive desktop computer system with two diskette disk drives. Issued in 1987, Berlin, L1558 is part of the 200 lots counting DM era section.

In its auctions FHW features top American items, especially scripophily from railroad companies. This time the USA section includes about 300 lots.  Some examples are : 

• a rare Colorado Northern Railway Company share, L1698, with vignette of a train exiting a tunnel, starts at €500
• Civil War Major General Grenville Mellen Dodge who later became the Union Pacific's chief engineer signed the Denver, Texas and Forth Worth Railroad bond, rare, L1711
• L1769, Chicago and Oak Park Elevated Railroad Company, stock certificate from 1908, great vignette of steam train on elevated track

From the USA section, this share in The Defender Gold Mining Company not only looks spectacular but tells a surprising story as well. Incorporated in Colorado the company prospected in the Cripple Creek gold district. It was founded in 1895 when the American sloop Defender defeated its British challenger, the Valkyrie III, in the America's Cup race. The share shows the winner, the "Auld Mug" trophy, shipping ropes and the company name, all of them in gold-print. L1706 in the sale 

There is a lot to discover in the auction, so here are the details :

• Date : 26 February, 2022
• Further info, see here; PDF catalog see there; live bidding is possible through https://connect.invaluable.com/dwa/  

F.L.

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