A friend of mine found a whole book of these things while cleaning out a basement someplace. While perusing thru them he found that one of them was issued to & signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1910 (before he was President or even Governor of NY). Most all of the certificates have CANCELLED written on them so I assume they have no actual monetary value, but would one issued to & signed by FDR be worth anything? If so, to who maybe?
Thanks.
Cool find! No idea about the historical value, though some Googling suggests that the certificate might entitle you to a tiny amount of equity in HSBC.
The stock certificate was issued to FDR and it has his name in script, but why are you assuming that he himself signed it? It seems more likely that the name was written in by someone at the bank. Besides, if I do a Google Images search for FDR’s signature, the results look nothing like that.
It’s very unlikely to be his signature, any more than your name on stock certificates issued to you, or on cheques payable to you, is your signature.
But this is something which once belonged to FDR, so that may give it some interest, if not actually any commercial value. I’m guessing no commercial value becuase a great many pieces of paper would have had FDR’s name on them - cheques, stock certificates, bank statements, etc.
It might have value as a historical curiosity, though not a lot. Donating it to a museum might be a good idea.
Note that stock certificates generally don’t lose their value unless the company goes bankrupt. Since friedo found that the bank and its successors are still in business, the certificate is worth something, depending on stock splits and mergers. A broker could research the current price; it could be a few hundred dollars.
Look for auction houses that deal with works on paper and/or autographs. They may be able to give you an idea. If it’s worth much, they’ll want to sell it for you.
I’ve seen stuff like this a lot on Pawn Stars. Usually it turns out the signature isn’t by the actual president (or celebrity) but by some secretary. This seems especially likely given the impersonal nature of the documents you’re describing.
Yeah, now that I think about it it clearly isn’t his actual signature because it looks exactly like all the other names signed on the other notes (I just thought that people signed things more neatly a hundred years ago!) Still, it seemed odd because it wasn’t found in a location that was in any way directly related to FDR, and it’s just one note in the middle of a book of over a hundred. If we hadn’t flipped thru it we’d have never noticed his.
Most of the notes have CANCELLED written across them, though not all of them. But I think they’re probably together for a reason (i.e they’re all cancelled). If HSBC is the current incarnation of the bank could I just walk into a branch and ask them? Somehow I doubt they’d be able to help! The FDR home/library is close by, I suppose they’d be a better place to start.
It’s likely that when the First National Bank of Poughkeepsie (What? Poughkeepsie’s a nation?) was merged into some other bank, FDR (and other stockholders) returned their stock certificates, and were issued with new ones evidencing their stockholding in the merged bank. The returned certificates were marked as cancelled and carefully filed away by the bank. Through the turns and twists of history they ended up in the basement that was cleared out by the OP.
If that’s the case, the certificates do not evidence any entitlement to any stock. If they did evidence any entitlement to stock, that entitlement would belong to the estate of FDR, and not to whoever found the certificate and brought it into the bank.
I don’t know a lot about this, but I have a buddy who is an expert on all things Presidential. Do you mind if I give him a call, he can have a look at it, and we can go from there?
(I am very interested, and I know just the person I can sell it to. Now, I just need to get it for the right price.)
For what it’s worth, November 1910 was an important period in Roosevelt’s life. That was the month he was first elected to public office (in the New York State Senate).
Interesting, but do you have any way of knowing that this Franklin D. Roosevelt was the famous one? The certificate is likely to be more valuable if it is. If not, it’s just a somewhat interesting old stock certificate.
You may want to inquire further into the possibility that this particular certificate, at least, was not canceled. I looked up the First National Bank of Poughkeepsie in the Capital Changes Reporter. The bank subsequently changed its name to the Marine Midland National Bank of Southeastern New York, in 1961, and then a slight further change in 1969 to the Marine Midland Bank of Southeastern New York, N. A. In 1976 there was a cash-out merger into Marine Midland Banks, Inc., and each share was exchangeable for $144.82 cash. (Marine Midland subsequently merged into HSBC, but your trail ends with the cash-out merger.) There was a 5 - 1 stock split in 1930 and some stock dividends afterward, so if I’ve calculated correctly (no guarantees there) those ten shares should have been about 69.78 shares, making the certificate worth a little over $8,000.
Don’t bother going to the bank; the staff there won’t have a clue what to do. If the bank lost track of this shareholder, it would have turned over the cash to the state unclaimed property fund. I’m not sure if they would recognize you as having a right to this money just based on the stock certificate, but you could give it a try. The website of the New York Office of Unclaimed Funds is at http://www.osc.state.ny.us/ouf/index.htm.
Even if that’s true he has no claim to it, unless he is Roosevelt’s heir.
Well, not necessarily. It’s true that you normally would want to see the certificate accompanied by a stock power executed by the record holder and with a signature guarantee. Still, if he is a purchaser of the certificate, then he has all the rights that the previous holder possessed. I can’t tell from this if he is a purchaser or not - “found while cleaning out a basement” is kind of vague.
A search of the New York Office of Unclaimed Funds does produce entries for a Franklin D. Roosevelt, but it appears to be Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., presumably FDR’s son.
If the stock is marked CANCELLED, then any discussion of stock value is moot.
If the stock is not marked that way, it may still be valuable. I know most brokerages can look up the history of any stock and see its equivalent value today. Even when a stock is replaced with another, people in the past (nowadays, you rarely see stock certificates) may not remember to cash them in.
The branch won’t know, but in theory the corporate offices would have that information; there’s usually a shareholder relations office that can give a more definitive answer.
Not so. If he buys the certificate, all he owns is the certificate - the paper and ink.
If he wants to buy the stock, he has to buy the stock.
It would be different if it was a bearer certificate, which certifies that the bearer of the certificate is entitled to the stock. But it isn’t; this certificate certifies that FRD is entitled to the stock, and that will reflect an entry in the corporation’s register of stockholders. Regardless of who owns the certificate, it still certifies the same thing - that FDR is the stockholder.
If you buy the stock, of course you’ll be given the certificate too. But this is not because posession of the certificate is proof of your ownership; it isn’t. It’s because you will want to return the certificate to the corporation, along with your completed and signed stock transfer form, so that they can alter the entry in the register of stockholders (on the back of the stock transfer form) and then cancel the old certificate and issue you with a new one, to reflect the altered register.
That may be true in Australia, but in the United States transfers of securities are governed by Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which has been adopted in every U.S. state. Under section 8-104, a person acquires a security if the person is a purchaser to whom a security is delivered. Under section 8-301, delivery of a certificated security to a purchaser occurs when the purchaser acquires possession of the security certificate.