From Reuters:
dailynews.yahoo.com
Saturday August 18 7:41 AM ET
View: Collectors Bullish on Old Stocks
By Philip Andrew Klein
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Peter Duppa-Miller walked into a small
London gallery in 1986 to buy his first antique stock certificate, the hobby
known as scripophily was just as obscure as its name suggests.
Now, as physical stock certificates face extinction and the Internet
improves communication, the hobby of collecting old stocks and bonds is
exploding, with certificates fetching up to $120,000 and the hobby's biggest boosters describing it as an
addiction.
``I went into that gallery and I was hooked from then on,'' said Duppa-Miller, 66, a former submariner in
Britain's Royal Navy. ``I'm an absolute enthusiast.'' His collection of gold mining certificates alone tops
3,500.
Membership to the hobby's International Bond and Share Society, which Duppa-Miller chairs from his
home in Bath, England, has more than tripled since the mid-1990s and now has over 1,000 members in
50 countries.
The Strasbourg Stock and Bond Show has been held every January in Pennsylvania for 14 years, but
this year shows were added in March and September to meet growing demand. Large conventions have
also popped up in St. Louis and Memphis.
Some collectors seek out famous signatures such as Thomas Edison or Preston Tucker. History buffs
may collect shares from the Civil War or Colonial periods. The Ringling Brothers certificate from the
1970s, which resembles a circus poster, is highly sought after by those who collect for aesthetic reasons.
Dennis Wallace, 52, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has an entirely different idea. The attorney for the
U.S Army Corps of Engineers concentrates on current certificates, especially of Internet stocks.
``My overall obsession with the stock market led me to collecting stock certificates,'' said Wallace, who
has been collecting them since 1995 and now spends 10 hours a week on the hobby. His portfolio of 500
certificates includes such stocks as DoubleClick, ETrade, EToys and Webvan.
``A lot of people would say that I'm nuts,'' he said. ``But some people go nuts if they can't play golf
every week.''
The colorful EToys stock, which was trading for pennies just a few months ago, was recently selling on
a Web site devoted to the hobby (http://scripophily.com/) for $139.95 as a collectible.
But the most expensive certificate ever sold was an 1871 Standard Oil certificate issued to John D.
Rockefeller, part of the company's original issue of 100,000 shares. Signed by Rockefeller in front as
president of the company and endorsed by him in the back, it was auctioned off last year for $120,000
by New York's R.M. Smythe, which can be described as the Sotheby's of scripophily.
The value of a certificate is determined by its signatures, artistic value, rarity and age within a given
industry. For instance, automobile stocks from 1900 are generally the most valuable, as are computer
stocks from the 1960s.
``In the six years I've been here prices of stock certificates have gone way up,'' said Marie Alberti of
R.M. Smythe, as she was preparing for next month's auction at the Strasbourg show. ``Stocks that were
going for $200 or $300 are now going for $900.''
She also said that she receives more inquires than she used to, especially by e-mail. Just last week she
received an e-mail from a college professor about Gregor MacGregor, who defrauded Londoners out of
200,000 pounds in the 1820s by issuing stock certificates for a fictitious Central American country he
named Poyais. Today, an ``authentic'' Poyaisian land certificate signed by MacGregor could sell for
several hundred dollars.
The hobby started sometime in the 1970s in either Germany or England. In 1978, the Times of London
held a contest to name the hobby, and the winning entry was scripophily, or 'love of ownership.' The
recent growth of scripophily is largely attributed to the Internet, where dozens of Web sites now sell
certificates and where e-mail has made it easier to link buyers and sellers. But the strong threat that
physical paper certificates will eventually be phased out has added a huge nostalgic value to them.
Publicly traded companies are still required to issue stock certificates by the U.S. Department of
Commerce's Uniform Commercial Code, but that could change as the Securities Industry Association
moves to cut stock transaction time from three days to one by 2004, making paper certificates
impractical.
Pierre Bonneau, chief executive of Stock Search International, a Tucson, Arizona-based company, said
that as a dealer in America his goal is to get people excited about stocks and bonds because of the
crucial role they played in the building of the country.
``This country was built on financial accomplishments,'' he said. ``This is part of our heritage.'' |
