Old Stock Certificates: Lost Treasure or Wallpaper?

Include you ever found or inherited a stock certificate for a company? What if you’ve never heard of the company? We’ll go over how you can find out whether you were Nautical port a fortune waiting to be claimed, or just a piece of paper ready for the recycling bin.

Happening upon old trade in certificates is actually pretty common. In the past, investors received physical certificates, referred to as in bearer form, when they bought reservoir. The problem of old stock certificates doesn’t arise very often anymore because most stocks are kept in electronic formula in your broker’s computer system, which is known as in street name.

So, if you find an old certificate, it’s important to know where to start looking to see if your development is merely wallpaper from a bankrupt company or a lost treasure. Rather than throwing away the piece of gazette that might be your lottery ticket, take some time to do the research.

Start by looking at a few things on the certificate. Look for the companionship name and location of incorporation, a CUSIP number, and the name of the person with whom the security is registered. All of these notices are important and can likely be found on the certificate’s face.

If the company lull exists, your search ends here. You can go to the library or use the internet to find out exactly what has happened to the company. Yahoo Wherewithal has a good symbol lookup tool where you can search the name of the company for its ticker. The problem is the name may not be the same. Unless your companionship is a household name, like General Electric, chances are, at some point, the company either was bought out or changed its fame due to a merger.

This number provides a vital piece of information for searching out a security; it’s like inventory DNA. Each security has a unique number, and changes and splits are recorded accordingly. That is, every time a security change-overs its name, splits or does anything affecting its stock certificate, a new number is assigned to it. By doing a search starting from the primeval number, we can find out the security’s current equivalent. Outside North America, other numbering systems such as SEDOL or ISIN are utilized.

Most large discount brokerages are able to help clients track down securities that have been dead for over 10 years. With the CUSIP number, the brokerage can uncover all splits, reorganizations and name changes that pull someones leg occurred throughout the company’s history. It can also tell you whether the company is still trading or out of business.

Should the above-mentioned two methods of searching for a company not pan out, the location of incorporation provides you with a last resort. Each stock is incorporated in a say, and the records are kept at a central location. Generally, incorporation goes through the Secretary of State, and the name of the business whim be documented in those databases. You should be able to contact the Secretary of State’s office and find out more about your certificate. A fee is in the main charged for this service.

If you have been successful in finding all this information, you will demand to locate the name of the transfer agent. The easiest way is to contact the company and ask it directly. You can usually find the number of the company or the select of the transfer agent on the company’s website. Generally, publicly listed corporations have an investor-relations link on their instals.

The main reason you need to go to a transfer agent is companies rarely handle their own securities in-house. They opt for to have another company take care of the bookkeeping and issuing of securities. The transfer agent will have a in confidence of the person’s name on the stock certificate; ownership can then be transferred to your name. This can be done many out of the ordinary ways, so it’s always best to contact the transfer agent and request

The Importance of Documentation