Do Old Stock Certificates Have Any Investment Value?

QUESTION: I’ve been unpacking some old boxes of things left to me by my father. In one of them I discovered some old stock certificates. Are they worthless or do they have investment value?

ANSWER: Old stock certificates, especially those from defunct companies, are only worth the paper that they’re printed on. But some, especially those with signatures from famous people, famous companies, or those involved in major scandals, can be worth quite a bit.

What exactly is a stock certificate? A stock certificate is the physical piece of paper representing ownership in a company and includes the number of shares owned, the date, an identification number, usually a corporate seal, and signatures. They’re larger than a standard letter-size piece of paper and many also have elaborate engraved designs to discourage counterfeiting.

Stocks represent partial ownership in a company. Today, most companies keep records of ownership electronically but some allow their shareholders to request a paper version. Each certificate starts out as a standard design to which the company adds the date of issue, identification number, and other information, including the printed signature of the chief executive. Executives on older certificates signed them in ink.



According to financial historians, partnership agreements dividing ownership into shares began to be used in northern Italy during the Middle Ages. However, these early shares were only intended to be in effect for a short time and only included a small group of people. Eventually the idea of shareholding spread to Belgium, and it’s believed the concept caught on in the trading town of Bruges. It was here that the idea of the stock exchange originated.

Eventually, shareholding took its next big step in Amsterdam in the early 17th century when the Dutch East India Company, formed to encourage trade in spices from Indonesia, issued shares that were tradable. The company compensated its shareholders well for their investments. In 1621, the market saw the issuance of shares for the Dutch West India Company, and much financial innovation ensued. Stock exchanges in the New World didn’t appear until 1790 in Philadelphia and then two years later in New York.

Collectors love canceled stock certificates because of their beautiful and elaborate graphics, as well as their connection to the historically significant companies they represent.

Old certificate values vary depending on their rarity, beauty, collector interest, historical importance, and  autographs, and industries for which they’re issued. Like all collectibles, supply and demand determine value.  Interesting pieces create a lot of demand while supplies vary.

What affects the market for stock certificates? Above all, general economic conditions tend to influence the prices of old stock certificates because many collectors of them are also involved in the real stock market. The law of supply and demand, as with other collectibles, governs this market as well. And Internet auctions have increased not only the availability of old stock certificates but their ease of purchase.

What determines the pricing of old stock certificates? Two important price boosters are signatures of important people and newly formed companies. For example, a Standard Oil Company certificate that John D. Rockefeller signed is worth nearly $8,000 today. Prices have leveled off in the last few years and finding rare certificates at reasonable prices has become a real challenge.



As with postage stamps, pricing can be affected by the rarity of a certificate—the rarer it is, the higher the price. An autograph of someone famous of the stock company with which he was involved also raises the price. Whether a stock certificate has ever been issued also influences it value, as does its age and decoration. The location and history of the company don’t affect the price of a certificate as much as, say, its condition and whether its cancelled or not.

However, no one point is always in control of a certificate’s value. For example, a Cody-Dyer Arizona Mining & Milling stock certificate, from a failed gold mine, signed by Buffalo Bill Cody currently is currently valued at approximately$4,000, while a rare unsigned Buffalo Bill's Wild West Co. stock certificate sold for $20,000 at auction in 2008.

As with any collectible, you should always collect stock certificates that are in excellent condition, have been issued, and are uncancelled. You should also collect certificates from industries that you’re familiar with or in which you’re interested. Early companies issued their stocks in small quantities, thus limiting the number of their certificates in today’s market. But there are lots out there for sale at low to reasonable prices.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about western antiques in the special 2019 Spring Edition, "Down to the Sea in Ships," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.

So You Want to Sell Antiques

QUESTION: I love antiques and have been collecting them for over 25 years and have so many things that my house is bursting at the seams. I’m ready to retire and have been thinking about opening my own antiques shop. Is this a good idea?

ANSWER: Lots of people dream about going into business for themselves. For some, it seems like a way out of the corporate rat race. For others, something to do in retirement. And while an antique shop may seem like an uncomplicated, quiet business to get into, it’s far from it. Remember, first and foremost, selling antiques is a business—with the emphasis on selling.

Many people think because they’ve been buying up a storm at yard sales and flea markets that they can turn around and sell what they’ve bought. Sure, you can put some items up on eBay to sell, but to be successful at selling on eBay, you first have to know what people are buying. Salesmanship is a skill that needs to be learned. And loving antiques has nothing to do with it. In fact, the worst reason to open an antique shop is that you love antiques and have been collecting them for years.

Most people come to consider opening their own antique shop by chance rather than on purpose. More often than not, their road to becoming their own boss begins at local yard or garage sales where they buy items that they like for their home. Eventually, they find themselves buying similar items and eventually begin a collection. This collection leads to exposure to other items which leads to another collection and, soon, another. By now their house is so full that in order to continue collecting, they must resort to selling some of the pieces that perhaps aren’t as good at their own yard or garage sale.

While yard and garage sales are where many antiques and collectibles enter the market, prices can be limited here because buyers are looking for bargains. So ambitious wannabee dealers seek out flea markets where they cannot only sell their items for higher prices but are also exposed to collectors seeking those items. Thus, begins the route to becoming an antiques dealer.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the best route, and it’s why most new dealers fail in their first year or two. While they may get a better feel for what to buy for their collections, they don’t learn to buy salable items—ones that their customers won’t be able to resist.

Many dealers begin by selling antiques part-time. Some of them use this as a sideline business to supplement their regular job. Others see it as a profitable hobby, a way to have the fun of working with antiques and make a little money on the side. A few dealers started out buying and selling antiques simply because their own collections became too large.

To have a successful antiques business, whether selling in a shop, at shows, flea markets, or online, you need to know what people want to buy and then buy those items. What usually happens is that the items people want to buy aren’t the ones they, as dealers, personally like to buy, so they avoid them. For instance, today, the trend is towards collecting items from the 1930s and 1940s. The wannabee dealer, however, likes Victorian antiques and can’t stand Art Deco.

Remember, selling antiques is a business. That means keeping records, learning how to display things so they sell, and developing a network of sources to buy new inventory. The IRS doesn’t look kindly on people who just play around.

For those who really wants to sell antiques, it’s best to start small. Renting a space at a small flea market is informal enough to provide exposure to customers, yet simple enough that prices remain reasonable. A table and a few boxes of items will go a long way. After selling at several of these small sales, often at church festivals or community days, the novice antiques dealer can move up to larger flea markets. If still successful, then the next step is to perhaps inquire about selling at an antiques coop. Here, a dealer rents a space in an indoor antiques mall and shares the duties of staffing the mall.

What many dealer wannabees don’t understand is that it’s vitally important to rotate their inventory. Antiquers tend to go back to the same flea markets or antique malls over and over. If they see the same items for sale each time they go, they’ll just walk right on by. The trick is to rearrange the items on sale and exchange some for new ones. By rotating items in and out of display, it looks like the dealer has more for sale.

Before attempting to open an antiques shop, a dealer needs to have been in the business for some time. As a shop owner, there are many more responsibilities, as well as higher rent to pay. So it’s imperative that he or she understand the business, have good contacts, and a ready market for their antiques.



The best way to develop an understanding of this business is to talk to dealers. Many will be willing to share their knowledge and expertise of the business.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about western antiques in the special 2019 Spring Edition, "Down to the Sea in Ships," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.

A Penny a Pack

QUESTION: I recently discovered what looks like a toy slot machine while browsing in a local thrift shop. But instead of different types of fruit in the window, it shows packs of cigarettes.  The machine is painted bright red and blue with silver accents. An emblem showing a sophisticated lady smoking a cigarette appears on the front under the window. What can you tell me about my new toy?

ANSWER: To begin with, your little slot machine isn’t a toy. It’s what’s called a trade stimulator, an item certain businesses used to stimulate business.

Trade stimulators were countertop machines used to encourage shoppers to indulge in a game of chance. They became popular in American saloons during the 1880s. Eventually, cigar, confectionery and general store owners saw their potential for generating business and began using them. Produced in a wide range of designs, these little machines originated around the same time as slot machines. Players inserted a coin and pulled a lever. If they got a winning combination, they won prizes of cigars, cigarettes, candy and other goods. When certain states prohibited gambling, business owners could use these machines without fear of prosecution.

The Groetchen Tool & Manufacturing Company in Chicago, one of many companies that manufactured these little machines, produced a variety of models of trade stimulators from 1936 through 1948. This particular one is known as the Liberty Bell or just Liberty. It stood 10 inches tall, 9 inches wide, and 10 inches deep and weighed about 14 pounds. The Liberty dispensed tokens for l or 5 packs of cigarettes. The three reels in the Liberty Bell have pictures of seven different brands of cigarettes. On the front cover of the slot machine is the image of a sophisticated lady smoking a cigarette that’s almost Art-Deco looking.

Many of these trade stimulators used tokens rather than coins, also known as mints. In many cases, players could exchange these tokens, especially ones marked “mints” for cash "under the counter." Other tokens displayed the words “candy” or “cigarettes” and could be exchanged for them.

J. H. Keeny & Company, which made amusement and gambling machines in Chicago, also produced the tokens used in trade simulators. In the 1960s, the Mills Novelty Company bought J.H. Keeny & Company.

Some machines also disguised themselves as vending machines by giving winners cigarettes or cigars rather than mints. For only one cent, the customer could play the machine by inserting the penny and pulling the handle. If they would line up three of a kind on the reels than the machine dispensed a special token good for a pack of cigarettes at the lower right side of the machine.

To further hide that a machine gave winners cigarettes, some tokens had different numbers of stars rather than saying “2 packs” or 5 packs.” Groetchen also made a trade stimulator machine called the Ginger, which appeared on the market in June of 1937 and took the star tokens. The stars disguised the gambling nature of the machine. As with the mints tokens, it was probably possible to exchange tokens for cash, at least at some businesses.

So what’s a Liberty Bell Penny Cigarette Slot Machine worth?  The "Liberty" Trade Stimulator dates from the early 1940's. The basic model of this machine came in many different configurations, and model types. Many still exist today. This trade stimulator still holds it's own with an average value of $200 in today’s market, despite surviving in great numbers.

During the peak of popularity for trade stimulators, a lot of companies copied each others’ models and gave them different names. However, collectors today are well aware of the many reproduction trade stimulators that have been flooding the market. Even though some began to appear as early as the late 1970’s, most came on the market in the mid-80’s.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Keeping Track of Days

QUESTION: I recently came across an old Coca Cola wall calendar from 1913. It’s in reasonably good shape. Can you tell me anything about how wall calendars got their start?

ANSWER: You may have a prize collectible. Coca Cola memorabilia always sells for good prices if the items are in good condition. In 1913, the Coca Cola Company printed a million of these calendars. Unfortunately, most people threw them away since they had only one picture on them.

During the latter part of the 19th-century, trade cards, the forerunners of business cards, often included a small printed calendar. In 1869, the detachable calendar pad appeared. The pad made it possible to use a calendar picture for more than one year. To most residents of farmhouses, country cottages, and log cabins, these beautifully printed calendars were the only art they knew.

Insurance companies were the biggest producers of early calendars, giving them away to every premium holder. Some of the big insurance firms made use of their company logo for their calendar's artwork, but most chose pictures of dogs, children, or elegant ladies.

Other businesses soon capitalized on the booming demand for wall-art calendars. The Coca-Cola Company, which began distributing calendars in 1891, had printed one million by 1913 and more than two million by 1924. In the 1890s, the Grand Union Tea Company, the Singer Company, and Armour Meat Company had their calendars hanging in shops and markets from coast to coast.

Soon, small business owners began to have their names and addresses printed on stock calendars. Printers of stock calendars offered voluminous catalogs of artwork from which the customer could choose, and the demand for calendar artwork kept many an illustrator from finding another line of business. So many feed mills, lumberyards, grocery stores, and other small businesses distributed calendars in the early 20th century that it is possible to assemble a fairly complete inventory of retailers from that era by listing the sponsors of old calendars.

New techniques in the printing industry called for intricate embossing and die-cutting, and the calendar became a lavish palette of complex colors and textures.

Printers employed many famous illustrators, including Palmer Cox, Edward Penfield, and Louis Rhead, to produce artwork for their calendars. Cox, a noted magazine illustrator of the time, created a community of impish cartoon elves he called the Brownies in 1883. His mischievous little Brownies were a favorite subject for calendars prior to the turn of the century.

The Minnesota-based firm of Brown and Bigelow, the world's biggest manufacturer of calendars, commissioned Maxfield Parrish and later Norman Rockwell. From 1925 through 1975the Boys Scouts of America authorized Brown and Bigelow to reproduce Rockwell illustrations for the official Boy Scout calendar.

By the 1930s, calendar advertising had become less effective than radio and mass circulation magazine ads. But the tradition lived on with calendars from automobile service stations and garages—important new features of family life. However, the calendars they commissioned were often less elaborate. In the 1940s and 1950s, neighborhood drug stores and heating oil companies continued to print wall-art calendars that featured detachable monthly date pads and simple illustrations.

Although calendars from well-known firms cost up to $100, you can purchase ones from the less famous names for $35-$65. You can often find calendars printed after 1920 for less than $30.

Today, calendars appear everywhere. You may still get a calendar annually from your insurance agent, but many people now use their cell phones to keep track of what day it is. If you still want to hang a calendar on the wall, you can get some nifty ones at dollar stores across the country.

Ka-Ching!

QUESTION: We’ve been using an old R.C. Allen cash register in our clock and watch repair shop for at least three generations. It still works fine, but I’d like to find out more about it. What can you tell me about my machine?

ANSWER: Yours isn’t the only R.C. Allen cash register to be found in shops across the country. These work horses have tallied many a sales for shop owners
since the company came into existence in 1932. It became one of the leading manufacturers of business machines. And although your model isn’t technically an antique—yours dates from the 1960s—it, nevertheless, stands out as one of the best the company made.

But the story of the cash register didn’t begin with R.C. Allen. It was saloon owner James Ritty who actually invented the cash register in the years following the Civil War as a way of preventing his employees from dipping into his profits. He invented the Ritty Model I in 1879 after seeing a tool that counted the revolutions of the propeller on a steamship. With the help of John Ritty, his brother, he patented it in 1883.

His first cash register was a mechanical device that produced no receipts. Employees had to ring up every transaction on the register. When they pushed the total key, the drawer opened and a bell rang with the familiar “ka-ching” sound that told the manager that a sale had been made. Those early cash registers were nothing more than simple adding machines.

In most cases, a cash register’s drawer, or till, can only be opened only after a sale, or when an owner or manager uses special keys. This reduces the risk of employees stealing from the shop owner by pocketing the money without recording a sale, when a customer doesn’t need a receipt but has to be given change.

Since shop and restaurant workers earned very little, employee theft was a major problem. Some believe that odd pricing came about because by charging odd amounts like 49 or 99 cents, the cashier had to open the till for the penny change and thus announce the sale.

Shortly after receiving his patent, Ritty became overwhelmed with the responsibilities of running two businesses, so he sold all of his interests in the cash register business to Jacob H. Eckert of Cincinnati, a china and glassware salesman, who formed the National Manufacturing Company. In 1884 Eckert sold the company to John H. Patterson, who renamed the company the National Cash Register Company and improved the cash register by adding a paper roll to record sales transactions, thus creating a receipt which the business owner could read to ensure that cashiers charged customers the correct amount for each transaction.

In 1906, inventor Charles F. Kettering, who worked at the National Cash Register Company, designed a cash register with an electric motor. Cash registers also got increasingly heavy, often weighing over 100 pounds, making it difficult for thieves to take the whole machine. The R.C. Allen cash register with its drawer weighs in at about 60 pounds.

Today’s cash registers include a key labeled "NS", which stands for "No Sale," and opens the drawer, printing a receipt stating "No Sale" and recording it in the register log that the register drawer had been  opened.

Many of today’s machines also include a barcode scanner that can retrieve the price from a database, calculate deductions for items on sale, calculate the sales tax, calculate differential rates for preferred customers, actualize inventory, time and date stamp the transaction, record the transaction in detail including each item purchased, record the method of payment, keep totals for each product or type of product sold as well as total sales for specified periods, and do other tasks as well. Known as Point of Sale (POS) terminals, they also identify the cashier on the receipt, and carry additional information or sales offers.

The sophisticated machine found in shops, restaurants, supermarkets, department stores, etc. are a far cry from Ritty’s original invention and even more complex than the relatively simple R.C. Allen cash register you asked about.

Getting into the Antiques Biz

QUESTION: I love antiques and have been collecting them for 20 years or so and have so many things that my house is bursting at the seams. I’m ready to retire and have been thinking about opening my own antiques shop. Is this a good idea in this economy?

ANSWER: Lots of people dream about going into business for themselves. For some, it seems like a way out of the corporate rat race. For others, something to do in retirement. And while an antique shop may seem like an uncomplicated, quiet business to get into, it’s far from it. Remember, first and foremost, selling antiques is a business–and the emphasis here is on selling.

Many people think because they’ve been buying up a storm at yard sales and flea markets that they can turn around and sell what they’ve bought. Sure, you can put some items up on eBay to sell, but to be successful at selling on eBay, you first have to know what people are buying. Salesmanship is a skill that needs to be learned. And loving antiques has nothing to do with it. In fact, the worst reason to open an antique shop is that you love antiques and have been collecting them for years.

To have a successful antiques business, whether selling in a shop, at shows, flea markets, or online, you need to know what people want to buy and then buy those items. What usually happens is that the items people want to buy aren’t the ones you personally like to buy, so you avoid them. For instance, today, the trend is towards collecting items from the 1930s and 1940s. But you love Victorian antiques and can’t stand Art Deco.

Also, this is a business. That means keeping records, learning how to display things so they sell, and developing a network of sources to buy new inventory. The IRS doesn’t look kindly on people who just play around.

NOTE: I’m still having problems posting images to this blog. And an antiques blog is nothing without photos of the items I’m discussing. So I’m looking for a new host for my blog and may be moving it in the near future. Please stay tuned and thanks for your patience.