I teach finance so I thought I would decorate my classroom with a framed montage of stocks and bonds and currency. Yess I could buy old ones online but I was thinking of purchasing some cheap stock and bonds and having the governments/companies send me the certificate. The stock is easy as Arizona still requires its companies to send out certificates on demand (last state to do so). Are there any companies that will sell and send out certificates for a nominal cost above the price of the shares? Also what companies/governments still send out bond certificates?
Because of serialization in the securities industry, this is probably way more expensive than buying cancelled shares on eBay or Scripophily. Brokers charge up to $500 for stock certificate requests, and the standard charge for certificates from a transfer agent is around $40, plus the cost of the stock and the brokerage fee to buy it.
You can get cancelled shares for less than $15 on Scripohily.
When I closed down my coin store some years ago, I had some left over. I’d be glad to sell them to you rather cheap(less than $5 each). Just email me for details.
Sam
I used to work as a broker on the phones for a major stock trading firm. As mentioned above, some time around the late 2000s, it became a major pain in the butt to obtain physical stock certificates. I don’t remember the exact procedure, but it wasn’t cheap. I can remember clients wanting to get their old worthless Enron certificates so they could burn them.
Always, as Christmas approached, I’d get the occasional request to get one share of Disney or McDonald’s as a stock certificate to give as a gift. There used to be companies that provided these for a reasonable price. However, with some googling, it seems like these aren’t readily available these days with it becoming even harder to get physical certificates.
I’d just buy up old certs online. It will still serve the same decorative purpose. Heck, maybe there are some old Enron certificates out there!
There are - they aren’t cheap. Completed listings on eBay shows the cheapest recently sold one was about $65, excluding one with water damage, and all the ones currently listed are $100+.
I have no idea what foul demon of autocorrect turned “dematerialization” into “serialization” but I apologize for not catching it.