Paper it's printed on worth more than stock

By Linda Rosenkrantz, Copley News Service

Scripophily anyone?

This is the rather ostentatious Greek-based term for collecting vintage bonds and stock certificates, the prime lesson of which is that the old, canceled, "worthless" stock you find in Grandpa's attic might not be so worthless after all.

Serious attention didn't begin to be paid to this subject until around 1976, following the publication of two carefully researched catalogs in Germany listing and illustrating the bonds issued in pre-revolutionary China and Russia, which were followed in 1978 by the issuing of monthly price lists by stamp dealer Stanley Gibbons, who also started to hold a series of public auctions.

By 1980, Sotheby's, Christies and other London auction houses hopped on the bandwagon, achieving very successful results, as did the New York house of R.M. Smythe, holding the first ever U.S. auction devoted solely to vintage bonds and stocks.

Today, some 30,000 collectors worldwide are active in this rapidly exploding field. An auction record was set this year when a Massachusetts collector paid $36,300 at a Smythe auction for the oldest known surviving stock certificate, dated June 7, 1783.

Several elements go into the appreciation of these documents -- primarily the historic and the aesthetic. Many of the older examples were printed in several colors and featured fine engraving embellished with ornate, beautifully executed decorative devices and, treated as rare, numbered, limited editions, they are now often framed and hung on the walls of offices. Printed via methods similar to the way in which currency is produced, they boast sharp detail attained through the use of fine, continuous lines.

Many collectors focus their attention on one particular industry. One of these is gold and silver mining stock certificates, superior examples of which, especially those relating to the California Gold Rush of 1849, are in great demand, as well as diamond and coal mines. The other two members of the top three are the building of American railways, beginning in 1830, and automobile companies. Among the secondary fields are electricity, water, oil, tobacco, textiles, coffee and tea, to name just a few.

Other collectors focus on a specific period of time or historic area, such as pre-1800, or Confederate bonds and other American Civil War material, or on particular governments like imperial China or czarist Russia.

Another segment of the scripophily community is more focused on design elements -- say in the art nouveau or art deco style. There are also a number of well-known printers whose productions are sought after, among them the British Waterlow & Sons, and Bradbury Wilkinson and De La Rue,and the American Bank Note Company in this country, the latter of which incorporated several other companies starting in 1858. Each firm employed a number of specialist engravers -- some, for example, concentrated on portraits (the most demanding), others on vignettes depicting, landscapes, buildings, trains, etc., while still others were responsible for the elegant lettering found on these certificates.

Since so many historically important industrialists signed the documents of their companies, these autographs become yet another prime factor in collecting scripophily. John D. Rockefeller, who started the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in 1862 (for an initial investment of $4,000) is a choice example. Others include Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the great railroad magnates, Henry Wells and William Fargo, J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, and various members of the Rothschild family, as well as notables from other areas, such as P. T. Barnum, Johann Strauss and Johann von Goethe.

Like most fields, this one has its own eccentric rarities, such as the late 18th-century stock certificate for the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, which is printed on sheepskin, the New Jersey Junction Railroad Company bond printed in 23 different typefaces to avoid counterfeiting, and the 1871 bond issued in South Carolina for a house of ill-repute.

Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 13 books, including "My Life as a List."

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