Coxrail News and Announcements

Massive Spink 312 catalog available

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

Spink Smythe will offer 3,517 lots over a course of three days. The sale will be held at Spink New York headquarters starting Monday, January 16. As with its recent sales, this sale continues its Collector's Series and will again feature paper money, coins, autographs and stocks and bonds.

Catalog #312 sports 322 pages of lots, with just a little less than half the pages dedicated to stocks and bonds. In terms of lots, stocks and bond account for 1,838 lots, or 52% of the entire catalog!

As usual, railroads represent the largest single industry group. I count 501 lots directly related to railroads including a large selection of 19 lots of railroad aid bonds.

Like other recent Spink Smythe sales, roughly two-thirds of the railroad-related lots are multiple-item lots. That means that one-third of the lots are single-item lots that feature some of the classier material including scarcer items and more expensive autographed certificates. As expected, personalities such as Morgan, Gould, Sage, Huntington and the like are well-represented.

The median lot in this sale includes eight items. Some collectors may object to multi-item lots, but they overlook the great opportunity to acquire items for very low per-item costs. With eBay an inexorable fact of life, it is now vastly easier for collectors to liquidate duplicate and unwanted items than ever before. Let's also remember that 8-item lots are very much smaller than in the days when Smythe was selling off the huge Penn Central hoard. Personally, I'm a great fan of moderate-sized lots.

I calculate that Spink Smythe will offer in the neighborhood of 13,000 railroad-related certificates. More if you count less obvious material grouped with non-railroad and general certificates. That is a LOT of certificates. And yet, the minimum estimated value for that number works out to only about $8 per certificate! That tells me that with rare exception, most of the collection is fairly priced, if not under-priced to the market. It looks to me that there are some serious deals to be had.

If interested in participating in sale #312, I suggest you contact Spink Smythe right away. Believe me, there is NEVER sufficient lead time. Even carefully reading the descriptions of several hundred lots takes more time than you will have. The quickest way is to visit the Spink Smythe web site or call 212-262-8400. You may attend the sale and bid in person; you may bid by mail or you may bid online via Spink Live.

Latest 2012 Scripophily.com calendar published

2011-12-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Most of you probably know Bob Kerstein from his prominent web presence at Scripophily.com or his appearances at shows. For the last several years, Bob has published a calendar of very rare and intriguing certificates from all types of companies.

His 2012 edition is now ready for delivery. For your copy, make sure you contact Bob as soon as possible at his web site or by phone at either 888-876-2576 or 703-787-3552. Calendars are available at last year's price of $9.95. (Bob offers discounts for large quantities.)

This year's selections are images of certificates and related documents from the collection of the Museum of American Finance in New York. Companies include:

The Cannonball Gold Mining Company
International Gordon Bennett Race
West Side Elevated Patented Railway Company
Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company
Kansas City Base Ball Association
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna bond
The Pneumatic Strength Test Company
United States of America bond
New York Electric Vehicle Transportation Company
North American Underground Telegraph & Electric Company
Shadyside Operators Inc.
A Republican Institution in the Town of Boston
New York Stock Exchange Inc
Standard Oil Company

Needed! Prices realized from Smythe sales

2011-10-30T20:55:00.004-06:00

As most of you know, R. M. Smythe and NASCA catalogs make up a large percentage of the references in my database of stocks and bonds. I've been collecting – and in many cases, re-collecting – catalogs related to stocks and bonds for twenty-five-plus years.

I am still looking for four missing catalogs plus two more that have fallen apart from over-use. I suspect I'll never re-acquire the catalogs, but I am hopeful of acquiring all the prices realized.

Do any of you have Prices Realized from any of the following sales? If you do, would you mind sending either copies, scans or PDFs?

# 69 Strasburg 1988, Public and Mail Bid Auction	Feb 6, 1988
# 73 Memphis 1988, Public and Mail Bid Auction Sale	Jun 23, 1988
# 80	?
# 97 Memphis International 1991	Jun 27, 1991	copy found
# 140 1995 Memphis Mail Bid Only	Jun 27, 1992
# 146 9th Annual Strasburg Stock and Bond Auction	Jan 26-27, 1996
# 147 9th Annual Strasburg, mail bid	Feb 8, 1996
# 156	?
# 173 11th Annual Strasburg, mail bid	Feb 5, 1998
# 177 22nd Memphis International Paper Money Show	Jun 19, 1998
# 178 22nd Memphis International Paper Money Show mail bid	Jul 9, 1998
#187 New York Spring Coin, Currency, Stock & Bond Auction	May 3, 1999
# 205 14th Annual Strasburg Stock & Bond Auction	Jan 19-20, 2001	contribution rec'd
# 212 25th Annual Memphis International Paper Money Show, mailbid only	Jun 27, 2001	contribution rec'd
# 269 New York City Winter Stock and Bond Mailbid Auction	Dec 15, 2006	copy found
# 272 Memphis Paper Money and Stock & Bond Auction	Jul 5-6, 2007	contribution rec'd

PS: "NASCA" stands for Numismatic & Antiquarian Service Corporation of America, a predecessor of the R.M. Smythe Co. The company became NASCA-Karp Auctions Inc. in about 1984. The company was soon acquired by John Herzog and became known as "NASCA, a Division of R.M. Smythe & Co., Inc." in 1985. Smythe continued the pre-existing catalog numbering in an unbroken series, so many numismatic dealers make no precise distinction between NASCA and Smythe. The "NASCA" name ultimately fell out of use in about 1991. The venerable British firm, Spink, took over Smythe in 2008 and changed the name to Spink Smythe. While catalog numbers were initially downplayed, SpinkSmythe continues the old catalog numbering.

Archives International Auction 6

2011-10-18T16:38:00.000-06:00

Short Notice!

Through his auction company, Archives International Auctions, Dr. Robert Schwartz will hold his 6th auction in conjunction with the first New York Bourse. The auction will be split into two parts: the first session is a live auction offering 563 lots this comong Friday night (October 21, 2011) at the historic India House at One Hanover Square in New York. The second session will be a live internet, phone and mailbid sale offering 604 lots on the following Wednesday (October 26, 2011).

PLEASE contact Auctions International TODAY if you plan to bid. Don't dawdle!

I cannot tell you how happy I am to see Schwartz's auctions teaming up with John and Diana Herzog for this event. And I can't wait to see the prices realized and hear back from attendees! Following a couple of intriguingly good European sales and recent strong eBay prices, I am predicting very healthy prices. I wish everyone - collectors, dealers, and consignors - great success.

Essentially all of this sale is made up of stocks and bonds. About a quarter of the lots being offered represent North American railroads. Of that number, just a little less than two-thirds are specimens and proofs, meaning that the vast majority of the lots represent scarce to seriously rare pieces.

From my viewpoint, there is a lot to recommend this sale. In many respects, it reminds me of several important sales from the late 1980s and early 1990s that occurred at pivotal times. Looking back on those sales, we saw a few lucky buyers procure items that have rarely appeared since. This MIGHT be one of those buying opportunities.

I'm not saying that everything in the sale is bloody rare. Nor am I saying everything will sell at monstrous prices. I am merely warning that many items in this sale may not reappear for years.

If I were a collector of mining certificates, I'd look really, really hard at an 1865 stock certificate from the Arcadian Copper Company (lot 379.) They're certainly not making any more of those babies!

In the railroad specialty, there are two bonds that sport an overprint explaining that bonds will no longer be paid in gold, but in legal tender. Both these certificates (from the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad (lot 514) and the Austin Street Railway (lot 541)) were printed in a narrow and historic range of time in 1933 following the suspension of all contracts denominated in gold. These items rarely appear for sale.

Another notable is a $100 bond jointly issued by the Lamoille Valley, Montpelier & St. Johnsbury & Essex County Railroad Companies (lot 552). By itself, the certificate is quite rare. What leverages its importance, though, is the appearance of a very rare brown RN-R1 imprinted revenue.

Yet another intriguing rarity is an uncancelled 1905 preferred stock certificate from the Yellowstone Park Railroad Company (lot 563). Certificates from this company have only appeared a few times, and I'm unconvinced that their scarcity has been fully appreciated.

As I mentioned, a large portion of the sale is made up of specimens and proofs. Essentially every proof is unique and specimens are rarely known in quantities of more than ten. The vast majority of specimens are known in quantities of five or fewer. Admittedly, specimens are not for every collector, but those who do collect them recognize acquisition opportunities are few and far between.

Let me stress one more time. If interested in participating, be sure to contact Auctions International immediately.

Mario Boone's Auction 47

2011-09-30T09:19:00.000-06:00

Mario Boone will hold his auction 47 and bourse on October 22 and 23 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Antwerp.

As typical, his beautiful catalog is fully-indexed with almost every lot illustrated in color.

This particular sale features 1,573 lots, of which 211 are North American. Obviously, every collector will have particular favorites. If I were a serious collector, my favorites would include a stock certificate from Polska Ruda Zelazna, a Polish iron company.

As I write this, the Euro is roughly equal to $1.35. Speaking strictly for collectors, this is a significant improvement for collectors over as little as five months ago when the Euro was $1.48. Two years ago, the Euro was hovering around $1.58. I mention this because most of Mario's start prices (for the certificates I specialize in) are very reasonable even when converted to dollars. This is especially significant when you take a close look at the offerings.

Within my railroading specialty, the sale features 73 lots of railroad certificates from North America. While you will recognize pictures of many of the lots offered, there are some hidden gems that may not jump out at you at first blush.

For instance, practically everyone has encountered pictures of distinctive stock certificates from California's Mount Tamalpais & Muir Woods Railway. That familiarity makes them seem much more common than they really are. Truth be told, I have only recorded thirteen issued examples in twenty years. I'm not saying that's all there are; I'm saying issued certificates from Mount Tamalpais & Muir Woods Railway are scarcer than most collectors realize.

An even scarcer certificate is hiding in plain sight and I suspect even fewer collectors will give it a second glance. Mario is offering a bond from Scott County, Illinois issued in aid of the Rockford Rock Island & St Louis Rail Road. This bond will only be the sixth certificate of this type that I've ever found offered for sale. Given its scarcity, the start price is very fair.

Still not impressed? How about a generic certificate issued for the Fairmont Helen's Run Railway from West Virginia. I've never understood it, but I know many collectors snear at generic certificates with typewritten company names. Never mind that essentially all are either very scarce or rare. This certificate is only the second one to come to my attention since I started recording railroad stocks and bonds and the start price is only 50 Euros.

Mario is offering a few items that are new to me. One is a municipal bond issued by the City of New Britain, Connecticut for a subway project. I've never seen the bond before, but that does not automatically make it rare. The same goes for a stock certificate for the Jordan Electric Train Signal Company (ME) and a bond from the Schenectady Railway Co.(NY) Where there certificates will go from here is anyone's guess; I can only hope that the winners send me good images.

For a catalog and more information about the bourse and the sale, please contact The Scripophily Center at www.booneshares.com.

Round lot shares

2011-09-20T07:39:00.000-06:00

Shares are commonly traded on the New York and other exchanges in standard trading units of one hundred shares. On U.S. exchanges, shares that trade in units of 100 shares are referred to as "round lots".

Before the advent of heavy electronic trading, round lots traded faster and more cheaply than either "odd lots" (fewer than 100 shares) or "mixed lots" (odd lots combined with units of one hundred).

Obviously, it takes a lot of money to freely trade round lots, especially when dealing with high-priced stocks.

I bring round lots because Max Hensley (editor of Scripophily magazine) and I recently exchanged a series of emails wondering about the extent that round lots are reflected among collectible stocks. Unfortunately, with the exception of my database on U.S. railroad stocks and bonds, we currently have no access to reliable numbers. I can make my database divulge all sorts of summaries, but we cannot possibly know whether the trends we see there translate to other specialties or the rest of the hobby.

In gross terms, round lots (any increment of 100 shares) represent about 26% of all certificates I currently have recorded in the database. Obviously, investors have always been able to buy stock certificates in any denomination that suited them. It turns out that the most popular single denomination was 100 shares (24%) with the second most popular being 1 share (14%).

The lion's share of collectible certificates currently reported are what I call odd-share certificates. 68% of all collectible certificates currently recorded are certificates with no pre-printed denomination. Such certificates usually have a simple line or a blank spot meant to be filled in with the number of shares being purchased.

The second most populous category is pre-printed 100-share certificates (17%) followed closely by pre-printed less than 100 share certificates (11%).

Companies issued certificates with other pre-printed denominations, but none were very popular. One-share certificates were popular in Mexico, but relatively few have been recorded from U.S. companies. A few companies tried other odd-lot denominations such as 10-, 25- and 50-shares, but not a tremendous number survive. Very few companies pre-printed large round-lot certificates such as 500- and 1000-shares.

The chart above shows the percentage of round-lot denominations that are currently known to appear on odd-share certificates and the four major groups of pre-printed certificates. As mentioned above, certificates denominated in round-lot amount account for about 26% of the collectible certificates in my database.

Both Hensley and I thought that the percentage of round lots should have been higher. Survivorship is certainly a great unknown. The current understanding is that round lot trades greatly outnumber odd lot trades in today's stock markets. Does that assumption extend far back into the past? Were round lots as popular in the past as they are supposed to be today?

The term "round lots" has been used for quite some time I can find the term in common use as far back as the 1850s in published discussions about shipments of iron, cotton, tin and other commodities. I can find reference to "round lot" stock trades (sometimes also known as "even lots" and "board lots") as early as 1930. However, Henry Clews never mentioned the term in his 1887 book Twenty-Eight Years on Wall Street. It is also curious that Haight & Freese, the famous Boston "bucket shop" operator, never mentioned "round lots" in any of its series of Guide to Investors from 1894 to about 1904. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary estimates the term was used as early as 1902, so I defer to its robust etymological research.

I suspect the earliest certificates with a pre-printed 100-share denomination appeared around 1868 or 1869. The earliest examples in the database are certificates from the Milwaukee & St Paul Railway and the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, both dated 1870.

While I suspect that less than 100 share certificates probably appeared at the same time as the earliest 100-shares, the earliest surviving <100-share examples date from 1872 (from the International Railroad and other companies.)

Up until the time that 100-share certificates first appeared, round-lot trades accounted for about 10% of the certificates in the database. I have absolutely no way of knowing whether that number represents the percentage of all trades before 1870 or not. By the end of the 1870s, surviving round-lot certificates had grown to represent 19% of the trades (according to surviving certificates.)

After noticing the growth in round-lot certificates, I queried the database to give me round-lot and odd-lot certificates by decade from the earliest to the latest.

The chart below shows how the percentage of round-lots (in red) have trended through time. It is readily appearent that the percentage of round-lots increased substantially in the last four decades. Unfortunately, because of my own time constraints, I rarely record recent certificates because they are normally priced far below my $20 cutoff. Consequently, readers must understand that the database is skewed toward earlier certificates.

Regardless of the accuracy of the count of recent certificates, the chart definitely shows a justification for 100-share certificates appearing when they did. The chart also illustrates how strongly odd-lot trades have persisted, very much counter to prevailing wisdom.

One final note.

I also checked whether there was a propensity for celebrity autographs to be associated with round-lot trades. There IS a relationship, but it is very tricky to draw conclusions. First, the number of survivng samples is relatively low. Second, many celebrity autographs (Gould, Dix, Durant, Sage, Devereux, Forbes, William K. Vanderbilt and Cornelius Vanderbilt II come to mind) appear on stock certificates in the roles of corporate officers as opposed to stockholders. If I limit the search to simply stock ownership, celebrity autographs appear on round-lot certificates with a little greater frequency, but it's insignificant. We must remember that the biggest stock operators in history (Gould, Harriman, Vanderbilt, Little, Sage, Mellen, Roberts, Morgan et al.) purposely hid their ownership behind squadrons of intermediary brokers.

So, yes, I most assuredly believe that there is a very strong relationship between round-lot trades and millionaires. It's just not provable.

The Wall Street Bourse

2011-09-13T08:32:00.000-06:00

Experienced stock and bond collectors know John Herzog as the long-time owner of the venerable R.M. Smythe Co. in New York. For many years, John and his wife Diana organized the wonderful bourses at the Historic Strasburg Inn in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. They retired from the scene after selling Smythe, but (as anyone can imagine) retained their interest in collecting.

John founded the Museum of American Finance and has spent an enormous amount of time breathing life into that project. The independent museum is dedicated to educating the world about American financial history. The museum now has an envious location at 48 Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange. The museum became an affiliate of the Smithsonian in 2001.

After a long hiatus and after listening to countless comments and requests about Strasburg, John decided to stage a new bourse for collectors in New York next month. The Wall Street Bourse (click link for a larger view of the ad at left) will be held on Friday October 21 and Saturday October 22 at the Museum of American Finance. The bourse will feature approximately 20 top dealers in American financial material, including stocks, bonds, bank notes, coins, medals and autographs.

Admission to the bourse and museum (10am to 4pm) will be free. If you are anywhere near New York on those days, please consider attending. Bourses are where you get to meet dealers, see wares you will seldom see in person, and rub elbows with other collectors.

Of course, no bourse is really complete without a live auction. Consequently, Archives International Auctions will hold a 500-lot auction on Friday night at the nearby and historic India House at One Hanover Square. The auction will start at 8pm and will feature live internet bidding for those who cannot attend.

The museum is a not-for-profit entity, so the bourse is completely independent. You may learn more about the bourse and auction by contacting Virginia Besas at 212-758-8119 or vakhb3@aol.com.

Join the International Bond and Share Society

2011-09-03T13:15:00.003-06:00

A couple days ago, I read with horror that the International Bond and Share Society (the IBSS) had lost 44 members between the end of 2009 and the end of 2010. Such a meager loss would not even be visible to an organization like the American Numismatic Association. But the IBSS is no such monstrous club. Six months later, by the time of the report at the Society's Annual General Meeting in July, membership had decreased by yet another 33 collectors, leaving a grand total of only 541.

While some of those members will certainly rejoin, the fact remains that all of us, including myself, are falling down on the job. We are simply not doing enough to promote the hobby. After all, the number of collectors who have contributed to my project over the years or who have contacted me about stocks and bonds is almost as large as the total membership in the IBSS!

And I'm just one guy involved in one specialized part of the hobby!

I am here to ask all my readers and all my contributors to step up and do their part. I ask everyone to do three things:

join the society
stay members of the society
realize their involvement will have an unknown, but crucial future benefit

Let me explain "future benefit" by asking a little question. If someone is currently collecting certificates, who will they (or their heirs) ultimately sell to?

Other collectors. That's it!

Future prices of collectibles depend entirely on one thing and one thing only! – the number of collectors active at that time. Consequently, there are only three possible scenarios.

If there are fewer collectors in the future, there will most assuredly be less demand for certificates. In short, fewer collectors equals lower prices. The equation cannot be any simpler.
If there are the same number of collectors in the future as there are right now, prices will be roughly the same as they are right now. It is my unshakeable opinion that if hobbies are static, the amount of money collectors receive upon sales of collections will be roughly equal to their initial investments after accounting for sales commissions and inflation.
If there are more collectors in the future, there will be increased demand for all certificates, hence there will likely be real price growth beyond the rate of inflation.

Those are the pure, unadulterated economics of collecting. Yes, I know there are collectors who like the current state of the hobby because prices are so absurdly cheap relative to rarity. But those same collectors will cry and whine and weep in the future if the hobby continues its apparent decline.
A static or declining hobby helps no one. Conversely, a healthy, vibrant growing hobby helps everyone.

I contend that helping the IBSS means helping grow the hobby. As obvious as that position seems to me, it is equally obvious that many collectors are staying away from the IBSS, the only organization I'm aware of that involves the collecting of stocks and bonds. What are their objections? I can't say conclusively, but I can address some of the objections I've personally heard.

I think 'Bond and Share Society' seems so ... European. Okay. What if the organization had been named the "International Stock and Bond Society"? I can imagine collectors in Europe (where the hobby started, incidentally) saying, I think 'Stock and Bond Society' seems so ... American. Regardless of the name, the purpose would remain the same: to promote the hobby of collecting financial bonds and equity shares.

The are too few articles in Scripophily about certificates I'm interested in. That's true for every member, no matter their specialty. But, so what? The fact is that every intermediate and advanced collector has a specialty that is shared by very, very few others. And yet, I guarantee that every collector will find knowledge in every issue of Scripophily that will impact his specialty in some manner.

There are only three issues of Scripophily per year. That's $10 apiece! Again true. And the truth is that at this time, some people literally cannot afford $30 per year. I fully recognize that. But I am not talking to those people. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but a person who cannot afford $30 per year to support the hobby should probably not be collecting. There have been times when I have had to stop collecting. There is no dishonor in pulling back, regrouping. It is infinitely more important to feed the spouse and kids before feeding an obsession. But, if someone IS fortunate enough to be able to afford a collecting hobby, then I think there is a responsibility to support that hobby with a $30 per year membership. I suggest that every semi-experienced collector will overpay that much in a single auction, maybe even a single lot, simply due to the inability to control auction fever. Furthermore, average collectors will almost certainly spend more than $30 on unnecessary food, bottled water, soda, coffee, beer, whiskey and tobacco in a single month.

I won't get any benefit from IBSS membership except for Scripophily magazine. This is a trickier complaint to answer. Few collectors want to go out of their way, but they must in order to appreciate additional IBSS benefits. With only a little extra effort, collectors who become members can freely gain:

invitation to IBSS member breakfasts at certain shows and bourses.
access to the full Scripophily.org web site.
free ads in Scripophily magazine for collectors
access to a complete directory of dealers and collectors.
access to past articles published in Scripophily magazine.
access to reviews of several years of past auctions (worldwide.)
access to other members. (So they won't feel so all alone.)
access to bibliography of books and articles related to stocks and bonds.
opportunity to bid in IBSS auctions.
opportunity to share insights and discoveries by writing articles for Scripophily.

Readers have now heard my rants and reasons. I personally ask everyone to join the International Bond and Share Society. At the same time, I also want everyone to understand that I don't want anyone joining if they are unwilling to continue supporting the hobby and the organization in the future. A one-time blip in membership is pointless. The hobby – and that includes ALL collectors regardless of whether they are 'joiners' or not – needs participants who will support the hobby for their entire collecting lives.

So, if you're ready to support the hobby you enjoy, come join us. Accept my invitation to become an active participant in the "stock and bond" / "bond and share" / "scripophily" / "wertpapiere" hobby.

2012 Stock Certificate & Bond Show dates

2011-08-31T09:13:00.003-06:00

Bob Schell's 2012 Northern Virginia Stock & Bond Show will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel-Dulles Airport next January 27 and 28. This will be Bob's 11th, well-respected show at this location. Prices will remain stable for dealers and collectors setting up tables. Admission to the show for collectors is $3.

Bob Schell

P.O. Box 222

St. Germain, WI 54558

rsschell@msn.com

The show site is only two miles from Washington Dulles Airport and there is a free shuttle for those arriving by air. Bob has negotiated an $89 room rate for those attending the show. (For special rates, mention 11th Annual National Stock and Bond Show and group code ENS.) To receive the special rates, be sure to make reservations prior to January 10. Call 1-800-227-6963.

Show times are 9am to 6pm on Friday Jan. 27 and 9am to 4pm on Saturday, Jan. 28. There will be a special breakfast for members of the International Bond and Share Society at 7:45am Saturday morning. If you are interested in setting up a table, please contact Bob for prices.

As always, don't diddle around in making reservations. Do it now. Four months goes by really, really quickly.

Price index updated

2011-08-25T13:07:00.000-06:00

I record sales of railroad certificates every day, so I cannot help but notice price trends. While my database holds all sales prices, I still maintain a couple of special database fields where I manually track high and low prices. Yes, the database can always tell me those same record prices. However, manually recording new high and low prices lets me feel trends continually.

Sadly, I record twenty to thirty new record low prices for every new record high. In doing so, that gives me a very, very good feel for the direction of the market. Thankfully, it seems I am recording fewer and fewer record lows than I did in 2008 and 2009.

Having said that, I am still encountering extremely few new high prices. Generally, new highs appear only when there are new discoveries. (And there are more new discoveries than average collectors realize.)

While being close to prices on a daily basis certainly gives me a gut feel for the direction of the market, feelings can always be wrong. Feelings need confirmation. That can be gained only by stepping back and looking at prices in a more global manner.

A few years ago, I established my “market basket” price index to help clarify how the market was numerically behaving. My index tracks 43 certificate varieties that seem to be in the middle of the market. By that I mean that I used the database to identify railroad certificates that are neither too common nor too scarce and that typically sell a few times per year. By using a market basket of certificates, we can decrease the effects of sudden and unpredictable pricing quirks that can sometimes result from causes that have nothing to do with collecting, condition or rarity.

Yes, a typical collector who really wants to buy all 43 certificates would certainly stumble across some abnormally good deals in the process. On the other hand, that same collector would definitely make a few bad deals, too. Therefore, I decided to smooth out weird and non-rational price swings by basing index prices on averages of the last five sales prices for every certificate. I have a Price Index page on my web site that explains the rationale in more detail. That page also links to another that displays images of all 43 varieties.

Compared to the coin and stamp hobbies, our hobby is typified by very, very scarce collectibles. Market basket certificates are sufficiently scarce and sales sufficiently infrequent that I feel I can legitimately update the index only every six to twelve months.

By January, I will have thirteen full years of year-end prices. A few days ago, I updated the price index just to see where the market currently stands. As of this writing, the market is down 38% from its high in 2003.

Please understand that I do not like this price trend in the slightest. Oh sure, I know many advanced collectors are happy that they can get screaming deals on scarce and rare certificates. I understand. I really do! But I must warn them to temper their elation with the understanding that when it comes time for older collectors to sell, they are going to be selling into that very same, weakened market.

Dealers and collectors who think prices are still as high as they were in 2003 are seriously mistaken.

Few market watchers have crystal balls and all of their devices are very cloudy. No one knows when the market for collectible certificates is going to turn around. I genuinely hope it is tomorrow!

However, even if the market for railroad stocks and bonds turns around in the next 24 hours, I cannot help but wonder long will it take before prices recover to 2003 levels. Experienced observers know that typical market recovery takes substantially longer than periods of decline.

I hope our hobby is atypical.

Price history details improved

2011-08-10T08:15:00.000-06:00

I recently changed a page on my web site to better report price history. You can find the page by locating any certificate of interest in the database. Then, simply click on any price estimate:

and a small new page will open.

That new page will show a summary of all recorded sales over periods of one, three, ten and twenty years.

This example shows a summary prices recorded for the well-known Blue Ridge Railroad bond from South Carolina. You can see that I have recorded sales for this certificate that have ranged from a low of $47 to a high of $125 during the last year. (Both were eBay sales) The average of all recorded sales was $96.

You can see that sale prices fell to as low as $8 in the last twenty years, probably representing a multi-item auction lot. Since that low price is older than ten years, you can surmise that it was an auction lot that predated eBay. (In fact, that price came from an old Smythe sale.)

You will also notice that one collector paid an extraordinarily high price ($256) between three and ten years ago. That price reflects a sale that took place in Germany. That high price included a 20% commission, further magnified by a period of extreme weakness of the U.S. dollar relative to the Euro.

My current price estimate is $75 to $100 and I last "touched" the price about four months ago. That means that I expect to that future sales will be about $75 to $100 whenever another Blue Ridge bond in average condition sells in the United States in a well-attended live auction.

Remember, I am offering a single price estimate, even though there are many separate markets. Each market displays different price behaviors.

For instance, if a sale of a Blue Ridge Railroad bond takes place in a well-attended, live German auction, I'd expect the sale price to be about 50 to 100 percent higher than my estimate. If a sale takes place on eBay, I'd imagine prices will be 25 to 40 percent lower than my estimate. If purchased from American dealers, prices for Blue Ridge bonds are likely to range from my lower estimate to maybe 25 percent above my high estimate. Prices for collectible certificates are highly flexible.

The point of showing this information is to let you see current trends in every certificate variety I record. Beware, however, that only about 7 percent (!) of all certificate varieties appear for public sale in any given year. While probably twice that many varieties appear for sale in shows and dealer offerings, there is no reliable method for collecting those prices. If individual collectors don't report their non-auction purchases, I never learn about them.

Scanning hints consolidated and enlarged

2011-07-21T07:58:00.000-06:00

Ever since I started the Coxrail site, I have included tips on scanning stocks and bonds. It can be challenging to get good images of certificates, especially those with engraved vignettes and lettering. Certificates seem deceptively normal when, in fact, they are not. Instead of having pictures made of multiple tones of gray, certificate vignettes are constructed from series of very fine, very closely-spaced engraved lines. Instead of having lettering like normal typeset documents, certificate lettering is often engraved by hand with letters only one or two pixels wide.

After writing the June 23 post, I went back through the entire Coxrail site and re-examined everything I'd written about scanning. I had hints and tips sprinkled everywhere. It was impossible to remember what I'd written, let alone remember where I'd put it. I found I had written several of the same things several different times on several different pages. From the perspective of months and even years since writing, some comments sounded inconsistent. Not to mention that technology had improved. Matters had gotten completely out of hand.

I finally decided to consolidate all my writings about scanning in one place.

Scanning certificates is now the starting place for everything having to do with scanning. From that page, you will find links to many different pages, each focused on one aspect of scanning certificates.

There are currently 27 pages in the new section, each displaying the 'SCANNING' logo as shown at the top of this article. The basic concept is to talk about one concept at a time and let readers follow whatever 'rabbit tracks' of information they find interesting.

Yes, I kept the popular page dedicated to Quick Scanning Hints for collectors who want to scan better but don't want to overthink the subject.

For those who enjoy the nitty gritty, I've added substantial new pages that discuss image File formats and terminology such as Understanding bits and Pixels, dots and samples. I have greatly enlarged my discussion about JPG (JPEG) compression and show why compression, even extreme compression, is not always the bad thing some pros would have you believe.

Note for readers coming to this page from search engines. If you want to learn about scanning and manipulating ordinary photographs, I need to send you back to search elsewhere. All the information I present and every opinion I express concerns the specialized task of scanning certificates. Nothing else.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor

2011-06-23T09:53:00.000-06:00

After recent conversations with a long-time contributor, I set out to investigate "image stitchers." That is computo-jargon for software that will patch together multiple scans or photographs. I stumbled on software by Microsoft that is outright amazing. It is amazing because of how good it is, how quick it is and how pain-free it is.

Best of all, it is completely FREE!

Its official name is Microsoft Image Composite Editor, or "ICE" for short. It is developed by Microsoft Research and is currently in release 1.4.4. It can be used on Microsoft XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines, either 32-bit or 64-bit. There are no fancy graphics to show you. None at all. No flash. No trash. Just kick-butt programming. It is available for download from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/.

Let, me tell you, I have used Photoshop for years. I continue use Photoshop when I need to adjust images at the scale of individual pixels. However, I have already abandoned Photoshop for all other image stitching.

I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but ICE is that good!

ICE is so intuitive and simple that the only thing you really need to do is open the program and get to work. Microsoft has a video tutorial, but I haven't even looked at it yet. In order to start stitching images of certificates, the hardest thing is installation. I'll get to that later. I first want to show you how it works.

I took the largest bond I could find (21" x 23") and unfolded it to its full extent. I then scanned the certificate in nine pieces. Alignment is not crucial. In my example, I scanned five pieces with the bond facing one direction and the other four pieces with the bond facing the opposite direction. Here is a collection of my images. (You can't see it in these tiny images, but the attached coupon sheet was scanned upside down.)

Next, I dropped all nine images into ICE. Simply open your explorer window so you can see all your images. Select all pieces and drag and drop them into the main ICE screen. That is it! You can try to make it more complicated, but if you simply drag and drop all your pieces into ICE at one time, you can just step back and let the program work.

You won't need to wait long!

I scanned this bond at 200 dpi and all nine images totalled 11 megabytes, On my machine, stitching took 33 seconds. Here is what the ICE screen looks like.

During those 33 seconds, the software examined all the pieces, calculated which edges matched which others, re-oriented all the pieces, adjusted coloration along the overlapping edges and created a whole image.

Next, you save out the image into one of several popular formats.

ICE is a panorama stiching program, not an image manipulation program. Consequently, you will need some ofther program to prefectly align and trim your final product. (What do you want for FREE?) Here is the resulting image.

As one would expect, images MUST be overlapped suffiently in order for the program to find pixels to match. Minimum overlap is a function of scanning resolution. With certificates, I found the minimum necessary overlap to be around 150 pixels. In this example scanned at 200 dpi, my minimum overlap needed to be about 0.75". In stitching certificates, I figure the more overlap the better.

So where is the problem? Installation.

By itself, the program is tiny. It's small size is made possible because ICE relies on the latest version of Microsoft's huge ".Net" (pronounced "dot Net") framework. Here's the process.of installation.

Download the appropriate program version (32-bit or 64-bit) from Microsoft Research. I strongly suggest you download the installation program to your hard drive. When ready, double click on the installation program.

Next, the installation package will look at services installed on your machine. It will almost certainly tell you it needs to install the latest versions of ".Net" and "Visual C++." Have patience. While you already have some .Net on your computer, downloading and installing the latest version of .Net will take several minutes, depending on the speed of your internet connection. Visual C++ will take less time, but will still test your patience.

When finished installing .Net and Visual C++, you will think you're ready to go. Nope. Go back to the ICE installation package and double-click it one more time. The real installation of ICE starts and only takes a minute or so. You will know you are nearly finished when you see the screen that says, "Welcome to the Microsoft Image Composite Editor Setup Wizard." A few more screens and you're ready to scan and stitch images..

Understanding the collecting gene

2011-01-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

The January 23 installment of the CBS Sunday Morning program had a several minute segment on an amazing collection being offered by Sotheby’s. Collector Jerry Green amassed a giant collection of over 40,000 toy trains and related stations, figures, bridges and so forth. The collection is hugely important because it represents every single item ever made by several different companies.

My main interest is not the depth and breadth of the collection. Rather, it concerns an observation that reporter Martha Teichner made. She said, “One look will convince you that there is such a thing as a collecting gene, and that Jerry Green inherited it.”

We can debate whether the mythic gene is transmissible, but the manifestation of the collecting gene is plainly obvious to all of us involved in collecting. While remarkably few people understand and accept the nature of the “collecting gene,” the CBS Sunday Morning report touched on every important concept.

Collecting is about searching for and acquiring “one of everything” within targeted specialties. Collectors who carry the collecting gene:

1) clearly and absolutely define their specialties, and

2) find a method of determining what items they seek to acquire.

While Jerry Green’s quest of collecting model trains and accessories is quite common, his execution is not. He precisely defined his acquisition goals through the use of vintage manufacturers’ catalogs. Green started with the Bing catalog, marking off every item he acquired until he had no more targets. Then he moved on to different manufacturers.

Ultimately, he ran out of manufacturers.

Green was fortunate to have started early and was able to fuel his passion with large sums of disposable cash. Today, his collection is worth multiple tens of millions of dollars. However, value was most assuredly not his primary goal. This is another defining quality of the collecting gene and one I cannot stress enough.

3) The goal of collecting is pursuit, not ownership.

Yes, acquisition is necessary. Items are not collected until they are owned. But once owned, individual items quickly lose their previous allure. This is the point that confuses non-collectors rather terribly. They think that collectors’ pleasure comes from ownership. Nay, nay, nay! It is the pursuit, pure and simple.

Sure, ownership is nice. Certainly fulfilling. Yet, once items are acquired, their previous importance dims, replaced almost immediately by new quests. Non-collectors will never grasp the concept that the next quest is greatly more important than any previous success.

Jerry Green’s indescribable collection made it onto TV because of its size and the fact that Sotheby’s is offering it for sale. The report got me thinking about how easy it is to spot non-collectors. Profit is always the main concern of non-collectors. Mr. Green and his heirs will surely profit from the sale of his collection, but financial reward is hardly the reason for disposal. As Green told Teichner, “I definitely will collect something else.” Every collector knew the answer the moment Teichner asked Green whether he’d fill up his collecting rooms again. “Absolutely! I’m a collector. I would have to. That’s the fun.”

4) Profit is not the goal of collecting.

In the last twenty years, I cannot tell you how few times I’ve heard collectors talk about intended profit. In my role as advisor, I rather wish this weren’t so true. I deeply wish collectors would consider their heirs more than they do. I often wish collectors would consider their purchases with a little more thought of profit. But profit is simply not in their vocabulary.

Few of us ordinary mortals have the monetary resources of Mr. Jerry Green and other big, big names in collecting. The beauty of collecting, though, is that we can all pursue collecting in our own way. We may need to temper our goals with financial reality, but that does not mean we can’t enjoy the chase.

Of all the things we can say about collecting, of all the psychological mumbo-jumbo we could argue, one clear point repeats itself time and time again. Collecting, like exploration, hunting, game-playing and numerous other hobbies, is purely and simply about the pursuit.

5) No pursuit, no hobby.

Again, Sunday Morning confirmed this important point. The CBS program clearly explained that Green decided to sell the collection when he ran out of good pieces to buy. There was simply nothing substantive left to pursue. Green had to sell so he could move on to the next quest. What fun!

One of my clients told me that he had once considered collecting elements. (You know, things like copper, iron, samarium, etc.) Not just a few – all of them. But he quickly abandoned the idea. He discovered that he could buy all but a few elements in one fell swoop by merely writing a check. And not a very big check at that. Shrugging his shoulders, he asked, “Where’s the fun in that?”

Where indeed?

Which brings me to the question of Sotheby’s sale of the Green collection. The company intends to sell the collection intact to one buyer. Wait a minute! What kind of “collector” wants to buy a collection in that manner? Even the most rudimentary examination of collecting proves that true collectors don’t acquire that way. They want to pursue items one at a time. I can see a museum buying the entire Green collection, but I simply cannot imagine a true collector doing so.

On the other hand, I can imagine someone buying the entire collection, and then parting it out in series of auctions over the next ten or twenty years! While I have a hard time imagining having a checkbook of that magnitude, I can certainly envision how selling a collection of greatly rare items, one at a time, to thousands of desirous collectors would be tremendous fun. Oh well. Like a thousand other pursuits, I’ll need to leave that pipe dream for someone else.

Hucksterism in our hobby

2010-11-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

Who would you rather buy from? A huckster? Or someone who treats you as something more than a brain stem? Speaking for myself, I try to avoid buying from hucksters when I can. I prefer buying from reputable sellers who don’t shout at me from the tops of their lungs.

And hucksters love to shout. They love words like “** WOW **” and “L@@K” because they grab attention. Never mind that they say absolutely nothing.

Regardless of their methods for attracting attention, hucksters are predisposed to overstate and oversell. When they do that, they unwittingly get themselves into trouble. Hucksters may understand selling techniques, but they never seem to understand collectors. They simply do not realize that collectors spend tremendous effort in studying the nuances of their hobbies. I am absolutely convinced that when they under-estimate their market and over-sell their products, hucksters sell less than they could by more forthright methods.

In our hobby, hucksters tend to focus their over-selling and over-valuation in four key areas:

1) Rarity. “RARE” is the promotional king of all buzz words concern collectibles. It is our hobby’s most over-used term. Isn’t it odd that some hucksters sell nothing but rare certificates? Isn’t it odd that they offer inexhaustible supplies of rare certificates and yet manage to sell them for such meager amounts? Shouldn’t rare certificates sell for more than ten or twenty dollars?

2) Autographs. The second most popular way of overselling certificates to promote autographs from unknown and unimportant people. Just because people were elected to political offices or promoted to elevated military ranks means nothing if those people did not leave lasting effects on a nation, a state or an industry. Let’s face numerical facts: there is a good reason why only a miniscule percentage of autographs are valuable. Over 2,500 men achieved the rank of “general” in the Civil War. Over 2,300 people have served as governors of states and territories. Thousands have served in the United States Senate and House of Representatives and fifty (!) times as many have served in similar capacities in state legislatures. How many tens of thousands of people have served in high appointed positions and as corporate executives? Hucksters want their targets to overlook the obvious question: “How can all those people be celebrities?”

3) Low serial numbers. eBay sellers frequently promote certificates with “low” serial numbers, without any knowledge of what “low” means. They never seem to care that the lowest serial number for some varieties might be 5000 or that the serial number they are promoting may, in fact, represent the highest number ever recorded for that variety. Over-promoting low serial numbers ignores a confirmed reality: European collectors seldom pay premiums for serial numbers higher than #3. U.S. collectors often refuse to pay premiums even for #1 certificates.

4) Historical significance. I once saw an eBay seller compile a 4000-word dissertation about a railroad company whose certificates seldom sell for more than $20. He was obviously trying to convince buyers that his certificates were more valuable because the company was so important. Did he not realize that there is almost no relationship between historical significance and certificate values? Sometimes, low-issue certificates from barely-known companies are more valuable than those from important companies of great longevity. Sometimes the inverse is true.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not equating advertising with hucksterism. Our hobby needs and in fact depends on truthful advertising. Hucksterism, on the other hand, embraces exaggeration and over-statement and sometimes treads dangerously close to deception. Hucksters will always be part of the landscape when buying and selling collectibles. They are not going away. However, I am unconvinced that it is necessary to resort to hucksterism in order to sell certificates.

Scripophily.com's 2011 calendar available

2010-10-26T08:42:00.000-06:00

The 2011 stock and bond calendar from Scripophily.com is newly published and available.

As I mentioned last year, I applaud Bob Kerstein for preparing and printing his calendar far in advance of the new year. I enjoy the fact that Bob's calendars always include December of the current year so they can go up on the wall almost immediately.

Each month features a high-quality image of a stock or bond from a significant corporation. This year's rail industry contribution represents a scarce certificate from the Gagnier-Griffin Suspended Railway Bridge Company. The particular certificate illustrated was issued to Dr. G. H. Griffin, the company's co-founder and president, two months after incorporation. The company had promoted its concepts as early as 1892, but apparently did not incorporate until March, 1894. Before the end of the year, it had already built one system spanning the Tennessee River near Knoxville and the 1894 edition of the Street Railway Journal announced the company intended to span Niagara Falls. The novel bridge design was intended to convey single rail cars across rivers on suspended cables but had many other possible applications.

Bob has compiled images of this scarce certificate and all other calendar pages in an Acrobat file that you can either view or download. Please contact Scripophily.com for your copy of the 2011 calendar. Single copies are available for $9.95 each. (Quantity pricing available.)

William Henry Vanderbilt article

2010-10-18T11:29:00.000-06:00

I occasionally stumble across articles that might be of interest to my readers. This article appeared in The Daily Graphic published Monday evening, March 10, 1873 and accompanied its large cover page illustration that measured over eight inches high. I reproduce it here exactly as it appeared on page 3 of this short-lived daily newspaper. As typical of the era, the entire article was one long paragraph.

------------------------------------------------

A WILLIAM H. VANDERBILT

Personal Sketch

Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, whose portrait is given in to-day's issue, is the eldest son of Commodore Vanderbilt, and a shrewd, enterprising scion of a shrewd, enterprising house. Though born in the financial purple, he declined becoming a mere pensioner on his father’s reputation, and at an early age plunged into active business life. He was born, in 1821, at New Brunswick, N.J., the summer residence at that time of his father, and after receiving a sound practical education at the Columbia College Grammar School, entered in his eighteenth year, the financial house of Drew, Robinson & Co., where he exhibited so great executive abilities that, after two years of steady application and eminently successful operations, he was offered a partnership. Finding, however, that from rapid growth and close confinement, his health was being undermined, he determined to recuperate by farming, and set earnestly to work to clear seventy-five acres on Staten Island. Carrying the same energy into his agricultural pursuits, he soon had 350 acres under cultivation. At this time the Staten Island Railroad Company was in an embarrassed condition, but as soon as Mr. Vanderbilt and his uncle, Jacob Vanderbilt, ame into its management it improved rapidly. This experience gave him a taste for the railroad business, and having been elected in 1864 Vice-President of the New York and Harlem, and in 1865 of the Hudson River, he devoted his whole time and attention to their development, and proved himself worthy of becoming the executive and confidant of the Commodore. The Harlem, which was bankrupt when he became Vice-President, is now one of the best equipped roads in the country, and the Hudson River under his management, has trebled in value. The Commodore, having secured a controlling interest in New York Central in 1869, consolidated the Central with the Hudson River R. R., and now this magnificent organization, with 700 miles of track, a business of $25,000,000 per annum, and a capitalized value on $90,000,000, is under the management of Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, its Vice-President. He is engaged at present in making a thorough financial success of Western Union, and since the Vanderbilt party took hold of it two years ago, it has advanced fifty-five per cent. Lately much of his attention has been directed to the passage of a scheme through the Legislature to connect his different roads with the commercial centres of the metropolis by the proposed rapid transit plan. He was married in 1841 to Miss Kissam, and the eldest of their eight children, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., holds the position of Treasurer of the Harlem. Mr. Vanderbilt yet remains practically, as well as theoretically, a farmer, and his knowledge of agriculture had been very serviceable in determining routes for roads and matters connected with the transportation of grain. Hale, bluff, and in the enjoyment of excellent health, he possesses a cheerful disposition, and though punctual and exacting in business is very considerate and liberal in charities. Having made several visits to the Old World, his mansion is filled with mementoes of his travels. Many valuable paintings of the old masters are hung side by side with those of native production, Mr. Vanderbilt being a liberal patron of American art.

Cox "Market Basket" price index updated

2010-10-10T21:19:00.001-06:00

I recently updated my price index for collectible railroad certificates. Prices continue to slide, although the rate of decline has not worsened with the typical summer doldrums. Prices only dropped about a percent since April and I choose to take that as a good sign.

My price index is based on a "market basket" of 43 certificate varieties. You may read a long-winded description of the index on my special Price Index page. You may also see images of all certificates included in the index.

In short, the price index is a total value of what you could expect to pay if you bought all 43 varieties of certificates at prices averaged over the five most recent sales. These kinds of averages are called "5-sale moving averages." They are calculated by taking the last actual sale price, no matter where that sale occurred, and averaging it with the previous four sales. Each time a new sale occurs, it becomes part of the average and the oldest sale is dropped.

Certificate prices tend to be VERY "spikey". I commonly record a $50 price in one sale followed by $125 in the next, $35 in the next and so forth. Moving averages help smooth out big ups and downs so we can see underlying trends without getting confused by the "noise." I would like to use more sales and more varieties in the calculations, but there are simply too few sales. We have to play the hand we're dealt.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the price index shows that prices were essentially flat from 1999 through 2002. Prices grew at an 8% to 9% rate in 2003, helped along by strong prices in Europe and a weak dollar/Euro conversion. Prices then dropped steeply thereafter. We can certainly blame part of the drop on the great shifting of purchases from big auction houses to eBay. I don't think anyone would suggest the global recession has helped collectibles, either.

Curiously, the rates of price decline decreased after 2007, even in the face of the deep and lingering recession. All things considered, it appears prices are almost 34% off the top of the market in 2003.

I am unconcerned whether these particular 43 varieties "represent" the full breadth of the collectible certificate market. After all, the Dow-Jones Industrial Index is a mere 30 heavily-traded companies that by no means represents the full breadth of the American stock market. We could argue whether a 3-sale or 4-sale moving average would show a different picture. We can wonder whether displaying the data by quarter would show more predictive behavior. We can bemoan the fact that we have no price contributions from dealers and very few from collectors. I'm not convinced it matters.

I've tried all sorts of adjustments and finally decided this picture is adequate for my needs. It tells me what I want to know about the health of the market and how I should adjust price estimates to match reality.

I will make a couple of final warnings.

Don't over-read or over-think this chart. It is simply designed to tell us whether the market is trending up or down. This chart represents the condition of the market based on 43 medium scarce North American railroad certificates. Charting more common and more scarce certificates WILL show different price behaviors. Charting certificate prices in different specialties WILL look different. Charting certificate prices from other countries WILL look different.

My crystal ball is in the shop, so I cannot possibly predict when prices will start trending up. No one is going to get me to say that certificate prices have hit bottom. However, I feel safe in suggesting that sellers hoping to unload certificates at 2003 levels will be sorely disappointed for several more years.

American Bank Note Archives Auction, part 6

2010-09-15T14:30:00.000-06:00

Robert Schwartz and Archives International Auctions just issued their latest offering of bank notes and stocks and bonds from the American Bank Note Company Archives.

The latest catalog is another beautiful compilation with full color throughout. There are 2,034 lots to be autioned in New York on Friday and Saturday, October 22 and 23. As always with events like this, the intervening time will pass very quickly. Please make sure you get your catalog as soon as possible and make sure you get your bids in right away.

Like the last couple auctions, this sale focus heavily on worldwide bank notes. Nonetheless, railroading and mining stocks and bonds are very well represented.

I count 255 lots of rail-related stocks and bonds from the western hemisphere. (U.S. = 235, Canada = 8, Mexico = 11 and Haiti = 1). As expected, there are probably a 100, maybe 150, certificates that have never been reported before. The majority of the new certificates are specimens that are either unique or nearly so.

There are too many new certificates to try to pick out a few to discuss. Merely let me say that if you are a serious collector, you cannot help but find something you'll want.

I have no idea how many more sales of American Bank Note Company bank notes and certificates Schwartz has planned. But I am warning everyone that the supply is NOT bottomless. I count 12 MAJOR sales of material from the ABNCo archives since 1988, five of which are attributable to Robert Schwartz. On top of that, you can add another 15 sales of unique ABNCo printing plates that have appeared among Stacks' sales of coins and paper money. Twenty-two years of sales of collectibles from one company is hard to imagine, let alone grasp! When that supply is gone – and I don't know when that will be – prices for these unique items are only going to climb. Do not complain if you're priced out of the market in the future because you didn't participate today.

(Don't know what you've already missed? After you've ordered your catalog from Archives International, go to a special page on my web site showing all past sales of items from the ABNCo archives.)

You may order your catalog from Archives International Auctions via its web site. You may also talk to a live person at 201-567-1130. But please don't wait.

High-resolution railroad maps online

2010-09-08T07:15:00.011-06:00

Back in 2002, I stumbled across a company called TheHistoryCD. Among gobs of other offerings, the company advertised offered a collection of high-resolution scanned images of vintage railroad maps. I quickly grabbed the four-CD set and found the images had originated with maps in the Library of Congress.

The images were organized by state and collected into four main regions. The maps were all pre-1900 vintage. Many dated from the 1850s with some going back to the 1830s. Three even dated from the 1820s!

As advertised, the images were indeed high-resolution. Due to the scanned resolutions, the images would have occupied huge amounts of storage space, probably in the range of eight or ten DVDs had the images been uncompressed. The 4-CD collection of images was made possible by compressing the images using a proprietary format called "MrSid." While a cute moniker, "MrSid" actually stands for "multiresolution seamless image database". The format is now used quite heavily in the mapping business to store massive images such as color air photographs.

The problem with the collection was that the CDs were non-indexed. It was impossible to locate a desired map without cumbersome trial and error. I imagine that most users such as myself would have wanted to locate specific rail lines and that task might have taken as much as a half-hour or more.

For my own purposes, I extracted all the images and discovered there were 279 separate maps. The maps were extremely valuable as historical references, just really hard to use. Even with those shortcomings, I have wanted to recommend the collection to my correspondents many times over the last eight years. Unfortunately, TheHistoryCD company disappeared. Try as I may, I was never able to locate any alternate source for the images.

Until a few weeks ago.

It turns out that all the images originally found on TheHistoryCD set, plus many, many more, are available on the Library of Congress web site. They are found on a sub-site of the library called American Memory in a special section dedicated to railroad maps.

As best I can tell, the library offers 613 maps, all viewable online for FREE. You can also download entire maps if desired. There is a genuine mother-lode of information here for railroad enthusiasts!!!

As always, there is a downside.

Indexing on the Library's site is immeasureably better that when the maps were available in TheHistoryCD collection. Nonetheless, indexing is still greatly wanting. Searching by Keyword can help. Sadly, the trial-and-error method of browsing by Geographic Location is still probably the most useful. For instance, my hometown in southern Indiana probably appears on 15 or 20 maps, but the Keyword search only finds two. Similarly, searching for company names can work sporadically, but the prevelence of railroad abbreviations precludes general usefulness. Moreover, even when a map is located with the desired feature, the web site offers no help in narrowing down where in a given state or region the feature may appear.

It would be great, great, great is some obsessed person would index the maps the way we'd all like. That would take years, so do not expect any improvement over time. Still, the maps are a tremendous benefit to railroad enthusiasts, especially to those with patience.

Where do new VARIETIES come from?

2010-09-02T20:18:00.003-06:00

A few days ago, I wrote about where I acquire new information about railroad certificates. "New information" includes everything: new sales prices, new serial numbers, new varieties, new issuance conditions, new printers, etc. Out of all this new information, I imagine collectors consider the discovery of new varieties of certificates to be the most important.

It is probably not surprising that, over the last five years, major auction houses combined to contribute the most new varieties (34.6%). Until early 2008, the late R.M. Smythe company contributed the bulk of new varieties. Since that time, the majority of new varieties came from sales compiled and cataloged by Dr. Robert Schwartz (initially for H.R. Harmer and more recently for his own Archives International Auctions.)

Curiously, less than half of all new "auction house" varieties sold the first time they were offered. I suspect part of the reason can be traced to over-enthusiastic valuations by the houses. On the other hand, collectors tell me they are always a little jumpy when new certificates first appear. They don't know whether the certificates being offered are unique or merely the first appearances of thousands more to come.

Over the same time period, the collectors who correspond with me reported a nearly equal percentage of new varieties (32%). While they rarely tell me their sources, I suspect the majority of their certificates came from U.S. dealers. If true, collectors who didn't get in on all those new varieties really need to form closer relationships with dealers.

Granted, dealers don't always know when they have new varieties. Nonetheless, they always know when they encounter certificates they've never seen before. Dealers tend to sell new-found certificates very quickly to their best customers. Rarely do they ever need to offer such certificates in lists, catalogs and web sites. Collectors please take notice: worldwide, only four dealers routinely report their new discoveries to me. Consequently, dealers are greatly under-represented in my records as good sources of new varieties.

In case you're wondering, no, there is no double counting. I always attribute new discoveries to earliest appearances. If collectors get certificates from auctions, auction appearances prevail.

Now for the surprise — and I hope this wakes up advanced collectors!! The third largest source for new varieties was eBay. That oft-demeaned source contributed 22.1% of all new varieties over the last five years.

Yes, I've heard collectors argue for years that they're tired of eBay "junk." They complain that they see the same old certificates day-in, day-out.

That is true. But the opposite is equally true! My census clearly shows that eBay sellers sold an average of 4.3 "new" certificates per week. I stress that I do NOT count eBay items that don't sell, nor do I count items that sell for less than $25.

Please be aware that astute dealers frequently recycle "new" items they find on eBay. Many of those items ultimately end up in dealer inventories and auction house catalogs. I do not know the exact routes those certificates take, but when " tired old eBay junk" is ultimately re-packaged, you must assume that prices will be multiplied several times.

Now for the bad news.

The discovery rate for new varieties has definitely dropped over the last couple years, certainly made worse by the global economy. I expect the rate of discoveries of new varieties will continue to drop.

But let's be clear. In this week alone, I have already recorded five new varieties plus two certificates that have only appeared once in twenty years.

Please note that I only counted first appearances of new certificate varieties for this little exercise. I did not count minor new variations of issued, unissued, cancelled, uncancelled, specimens and proofs as new varieties.

	Items	Percent	Items	Percent
eBay auctions	1,125	22.1%
US auctions	1,608	31.5%
Euro auctions	160	3.1%
US dealer sites & catalogs	334	6.5%
Euro dealer sites & catalogs	19	0.4%
Other US	0	0.0%
Other Euro	11	0.2%
Total from discoveries			3,257	63.8%

US collectors	1,494	18.4%
Euro collectors	137	7.3%
US dealers	194	2.0%
Euro dealers	20	0.9%
Total from contributions			1,845	36.2%
			______	_____
Grand Total All Sources			5,102	100%

Where does new information come from?

2010-08-26T20:42:00.012-06:00

As of this writing, my database contains 18,392 distinct varieties of railroad and railroad-related certificates from North America. In case you're counting, that is 4,260 more varieties than was included in the second edition of my catalog published in 2003.

Growing the database at this speed required contributions from interested collectors in addition to research into auction listings in the U.S. and Europe. 39,557 new sources of information were added to the database in the last five years counting all the various types of information such as serial numbers, prices, images, corrections, new companies, new varieties, new sub-varieties, etc.

28.5% of all new information came from contributions; the remainder came from personal discoveries. The lion's share of contributions come from collectors (90%) with the remainder from dealers (10%). Since most contributions include high-resolution images, contributions represent the most complete and valuable types of information I receive. I greatly appreciate every contribution and I try to respond as quickly as possible, even if it is only one certificate.

71.5% of my new sources of information come from auction catalogs, dealer web sites and, of course, eBay. Regardless of how much advanced collectors might like to downplay the role of eBay in the hobby, it has proven exceedingly important to me. In the last five years, one-third (!) of all my new information came from eBay. Unlike the information I glean from auctions and dealer sites, eBay information comes only from items that actually sold. I stress that I collect information only from sales that take place at $25 and above.

Information from professional auctions is valuable because those sales tend to focus on scarcer certificates. Unlike eBay sales, I record every identifiable certificate from auction catalogs. I record all prices regardless of whether certificates sold or not. Some auctions are very valuable for helping discover new varieties. R.M. Smythe's sales used to play a leading role in introducing new certificates to the hobby. There is widespread hope that SpinkSmythe will resume making similar contributions in the coming years. Thankfully, Dr. Robert Schwartz's sales (at Harmer and recently via Archives International) have filled a major part of the void left by R.M. Smythe and they have added vast numbers of new certificates in the last few years.

	Items	Percent	Items	Percent
eBay auctions	13,167	33.3%
US auctions	6.633	16.8%
Euro auctions	6,302	15.9%
US dealer sites & catalogs	2,054	5.2%
Euro dealer sites & catalogs	75	0.2%
Other US	22	0.1%
Other Euro	11	<0.1%
Total from discoveries			28,264	71.5%

US collectors	7,267	18.4%
Euro collectors	2,903	7.3%
US dealers	779	2.0%
Euro dealers	344	0.9%
Total from contributions			11,293	28.5%
			______	_____
Grand Total All Sources			39,557	100%

Information from dealer catalogs and web sites is somewhat problematic. Some items stay in place for years and we never know why. Items may be properly priced for their clientele and the dealers may have several copies for sale. Or items may be over-priced and not selling at all. Moreover, when inventory sells, we never know how much discount the dealers may have offered. In other words, all prices we see in dealers' web sites and catalogs are merely suggested prices and consequently of less value than those communicated by auctions and collectors.

In a few days, I will add another article similar to this one which will analyze where new varieties have come from in the last five years. I think you'll be a little surprised.

Boone sale 45 in mid-September

2010-08-23T15:16:00.003-06:00

Mario Boone’s sale catalog #45 just arrived this morning. As we’ve come to expect, Mario’s catalogs and selections keep improving. This particular sale, slated for September 18 and 19, offers 1884 international lots covering every major business type.

Railroading is, as usual, well-represented. I count 96 lots dedicated to railroads in my specialty area of North America. Most everything I see from the U.S. is medium scarce. In other words, I don’t see anything particularly rare nor particularly common. While I cannot comment on non-railroad certificates, Mario’s price estimates for North American railroad certificates seem to reflect the reality of today’s market conditions. Consequently, I expect Boone’s sale will experience higher than normal sale rates.

Going through the catalog to write this blog article, I found two items that caught my eye. The first is the unissued red and black $50 bond of The People’s Railway Company of America (lot 1673). This company was dismissed in the early 1880s as fraudulent, but that would never have prevented stock or bond sales. Nonetheless, no issued examples have ever been reported and these borderline-rare items are known only in unissued form.

Another interesting item is an issued certificate (lot 1703) from the Del Norte & Humboldt Railroad Company. The design of the certificate for this California company is somewhat plain, but is clean, well-preserved and one of only five issued examples reported to me so far. I currently estimate fewer than ten examples exist. Mario’s €150 estimate is well below the $569 highest price recorded.

You may contact Mario Boone and his Scripophily Center at www.booneshares.com or call him at 0032-(0)9.386.90.91 to receive a copy of the catalog for the 45th Auction and Bourse to be held at the Crowne Plaza in Antwerp, Belgium.

Cox prices and the bell curve

2010-07-02T08:32:00.004-06:00

Of all the things I might be, a statistician is not one of them. Don’t expect an academic lecture on the subject from me.

Many readers expect my catalog prices should somehow predict the middle of a theoretical “bell curve.” They assume that when certificates are offered for sale, some will sell for more than my estimates and some will sell for less but they expect my price estimates to be about “average.”

In practice, readers usually notice my prices are usually higher or lower than the prices they are used to. Why is that?

I view the market as terribly thin. There are very few certificates to go around and items come up for sale very infrequently. No matter how much collectors might be willing to pay, they cannot possibly go out and buy everything they want. They MUST wait. Many certificates appear for sale only once every ten to twenty years! It is pretty hard to construct a nice bell curve distribution to explain that kind of market.

In my opinion, I see no justification for predicting a single bell curve of certificate prices simply because I see no single market. Instead, I see several very distinct markets, each with its own corresponding price curve. Collectors rarely participate in more than a few markets and many do not realize that certificates sell for wildly different prices elsewhere.

The diagram above shows what I mean.

Advanced and intermediate collectors are well aware that eBay prices are absurdly low compared to the rest of the collectible certificate market. Typically, my catalog price estimates are 1.5 to 2 times higher than typical eBay prices. At the same time, my estimates are often half or less of European dealers’ catalog prices. In general, my prices tend to be somewhere in the ranges of prices offered by major American dealers.

Full-fledged American auction houses usually realize higher prices than eBay. Price differences between eBay and major houses depend very much on the types of certificates being sold. Rare certificates perform much better in formal auction houses, but common material often does better on eBay. My diagram shows the typical price overlap.

European auctions tend to sell low percentages of items compared to American auctions, but the disadvantage is offset with higher prices. Major dealers, regardless of whether they are North American or European, buy much of their inventory from auctions. Consequently, dealers catalog prices exceed prices realized in auctions.

I try to estimate certificate prices at levels that average collectors might expect to pay if they want to fill their collections moderately quickly . If they are very patient, collectors can often wait for appearances on eBay and potentially save bunches of money. Conversely, if collectors want specific certificates very quickly, they may need to pay very high prices, possibly from European suppliers.

Spink Smythe auction 302

2010-06-14T15:04:00.002-06:00

The latest Spink Smythe stock and bond auction catalog arrived today. The sale will take place in Dallas on June 29, but lots may be viewed at the Memphis show on June 18, 19 and 20.

This sale is most welcomed and I hope collectors respond favorably. There are approximately 868 lots comprising probably a couple thousand certificates, all from the Americas. Contact Spink Smythe immediately at 800-556-7826 if you have not yet received your 88-page catalog.

As expected, offerings from railroad companies (178 lots), mining companies (155 lots) and automobile companies (90 lots) make up the bulk of the sale. Spink Smythe has improved its indexing which makes finding desireable certificates easier.

Less than half the offered lots are shown in the catalog, but all catalog images are in high-quality color. Additional single-item lots are shown online at http://www.spinksmythe.com, but still not all.

For price guidance, Spink Smythe has changed from a "price-range estimate" (eg. $125-250) to a "single-price estimate" (eg. $175). I personally think this is a better approach for the company. Having recorded thousands upon thousands of prices from NASCA, Smythe and Spink Smythe, I am convinced that the majority of bidders always interpreted the low estimate as the lowest acceptable bid. That was not true, of course, but prices realized still tended to cluster around the low estimate. It will be interesting to see how prices will behave with this sale.

In recent auctions, Spink Smythe continued the Smythe tradition of establishing its minimum acceptable bid at 60% of the lowest bid estimate. This time, the introductory letter by Mike Veissid and Jim Fitzgerald states that collectors can bid any amount they feel appropriate. I have always been comfortable bidding that way but no everybody is. It leaves the door wide open for the company to decide whether bids are made in good faith or not. I hope the experiment results in higher sales percentages like those from the early 1990s. On the other hand, I can imagine bidders heavily trained by absurdly low eBay prices might be scared away by the uncertainy.

I never enter auction lots into my database until after sales close, so I don't have precise counts. It looks to me that there are 178 lots related to railroading, counting US certificates, autographed certificates and related certificates from Panama, Mexico and Canada. Of that number, 137 lots are single-item lots and 41 lots are multi-item lots. I always advise multi-item for collectors who are also part-time sellers.

Spink Smythe's buyers' commission is 20% for the first $2000 PER LOT and 15% thereafter. With rare exception, the days of 10% commissions are gone, simply because sales percentages are so low and production costs so high. Always be sure to factor in the costs of commissions and shipping when calculating your bids. Do not wait until your invoice arrives before thinking about those added costs.

What's it worth?

2010-06-09T09:08:00.003-06:00

Every collector wants the answer to the #1 question in collectibles. It is terribly hard to answer because values are only established at single, short-lived moments in time.

The value of every collectible is what the next person will pay you. It does not matter what you or I think something is worth. No opinion matters except that of the buyer. Period.

Oh, sure, I can estimate value for you and I can back up my opinion with almost a million price records. But so what? Unless I am the guy buying from you, my opinion is nothing more than an educated guess. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It also does not matter one tiny bit what you pay for a collectible. Your ownership can certainly detract from value if you mishandle your collectibles, but your ownership can rarely add value. The amount you paid for something has no relevence except to you, your family, and potentially your heirs. Once you’ve purchased a collectible, the meaning of your expenditure disappears like mist in the sun.

It is difficult for me to explain this point clearly, so let me give you a real-life example from this past Monday.

I retruned from a trip to southern Colorado and began recording prices from eBay sales that had occurred over the previous four days. I saw one person had willingly paid over $150 for an unissued certificate. That might have been a fair price for an issued certificate, but I would have estimated its value as under $30 in its stated condition.

Did the buyer make a mistake? Maybe he or she did not notice that the certificate had never been issued. Maybe the buyer thought that unissued certificates were worth more than issued examples. Perhaps the buyer purchased the item as a gift and did not care about its competitive value.

Either way, how can we estimate what the certificate is worth today? We make that estimation by predicting what amount the next buyer will pay.

I personally predict the next buyer will probably be unwilling to pay more than $30. (Even if the sale does not occur for thirty years, we merely back-calculate and remove the effects of inflation over that period.) Of course, I can be wrong. There are certainly greater fools out there, but I think it is highly improbable that the next person will pay $150 to the person who purchased over the weekend.

Every collector has overpaid for something. Get over the idea that you are somehow immune from making mistakes. The goal is not to avoid mistakes, but to make fewer mistakes. Try to be clear-headed when buying. And please, please, please remember: just because something SEEMS to underpriced does not mean it really is. No matter how low prices seem today, they CAN go lower. Value is not set by you but by the person who ultimately buys from you.

What does the word “rare” mean?

2010-05-10T09:12:00.002-06:00

It’s getting harder and harder to know. Theoretically, “rare” describes items that are found very infrequently. Truly rare certificates appear for sale only once every five to ten years. If an experienced MAJOR certificate dealer describes a certificate as rare, then there are possibly fewer than ten examples known on the entire planet.

At the other end of the spectrum, I recently recorded a single variety of railroad bond offered for sale on eBay no fewer than ten times in three weeks. All were described as “rare.” No true collector would ever believe a rare certificate would appear for sale that frequently.

Now it IS true that, taken as a whole, certificates are much, much scarcer than many other collectibles. On the basis of numbers alone, the most common certificate varieties would be considered scarce in the coin and stamp hobbies.

But we’re not talking about the coin and stamp hobbies. We’re talking about certificates. If a certificate variety appears for sale ten times in three weeks, it is not the slightest bit rare. I have seen many certificates described as “rare” on eBay that can be purchased in quantities of hundreds, even thousands. That should warn all collectors that, depending on where it is used, the word “rare” can be nothing more than an overused marketing term.

To further illustrate my point, a search this morning shows that seven percent (!) of all eBay certificate offerings carry the word “rare.” That is absolutely ludicrous!

Please understand that “rare” is mostly used as a marketing term on eBay. That does not mean that it is always deceptive. In fact, some incredibly rare certificates appear for sale on eBay. Some certificates, whether described as “rare” or not, appear to be unique. Keep your eyes open, ignore the word “rare,” do your research and you’ll probably do okay. Believe the word “rare” automatically implies value and you’ll spend a lot of money needlessly.

Upcoming Spink sale in Fort Worth

2010-05-06T10:11:00.002-06:00

The newest Spink catalog arrived a couple days ago and should be in the hands of most of my readers. If you have not received your copy, contact Spink immediately.

Spink will be offering a little over 1600 lots in a two-day sale in conjunction with the Texas Numismatic Association show in Fort Worth. As expected, the vast majority of the offerings are related to coins and currency with a significant percentage of the lots illustrated in terrific full color.

Sadly, the selection of stocks and bonds is limited to a mere 22 lots of which seven are related to railroads.

I heartily applaud a couple of Spink’s auction rules. First, mail bidders can rest assured their bids will only be executed at one bid increment above the next lowest bid. In other words, if a mail bidder is willing to pay $400 for an item, but the next lowest bid is $150, the bidder will win the bid at $160 exactly as if he'd been sitting in the room.

Secondly, Spink agrees to fully disclose any items that are repaired, restored, processes, cleaned, pressed and "conserved." I desperately wish more sellers would follow this example.

On the down-side, I see no mention of minimum acceptable bids.

The sale will take place Friday and Staurday evenings (May 14 and 15) at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth. Lots can be previewed Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Bridges and tunnels will stay

2010-04-14T10:11:00.003-06:00

Thanks to everyone who replied to my questions about keeping tunnel and bridge companies in the railroad database. I conducted a similar poll ten or twelve years ago and the answer was exactly the same. Most collectors want me to keep those kinds of companies in the catalog, so I will.

Collectors constantly send inquiries asking me to add all sorts of near-topic companies to the project. I completely understand their rationale, because that is why I started this project in the first place. Simply put, they have certificates that are not covered by any other price guide.

The problem is that adding new companies is a monstrous task and greatly dilutes my efforts at cataloging railroad certificates. Not to mention, that off-topic companies do not help the vast majority of collector who specialize strictly in railroad certificates. As a matter of policy, the only companies I now add to the project are railroad companies and manufacturers which were extremely close to railroading.

For those of you interested in my selection criteria, I ask you to visit my completely re-written page concerning Types of companies included in this guide. I have been fighting an exhausting battle against project expansion for fifteen years and this is the latest attempt at strengthening the lines.

(The picture at the top is from a stereo view card from around 1900. It shows a Pennsylvania Railroad bridge across the Potomac River at Washington DC.)

Savage's plea for more money

2010-04-05T15:17:00.005-06:00

Here is an interesting page sent by a Mr. Corey Phelps, a long-time collector. It is a hand-typed letter on letterhead from the Minneapolis St Paul & Dubuque Electric Traction Co. This was the "Dan Patch Electric Line" tirelessly promoted by Marion Savage and named after his famous race horse. (The horse owned the world pacer record for either 32 or 54 years, depending on information source.)

Savage was one of the first promoters to attempt to sell railroad stock to average people. He advertised heavily in magazines, where he relied on the strength of the famous "Dan Patch" name to secure promises to buy stock in the railroad company.

The company was organized in 1907 and had 7,980 stockholders by 1914. Bob Kerstein of Scripophily.com cites the company had about 8,500 stockholders at its peak, an astounding number for a company of its size. Common stockholders had voting rights, but preferred stockholders did not. The company was only minimally profitable and was in receivership by 1918. The owner and I agree that this undated letter was probably written about 1914.

This letter, autographed by Savage, was a plea to the subscriber to pay for his or her stock. The letter is complete in itself, but is clearly labeled as page two. Page one is missing and I suspect it may have been some sort of flashier company promo. Obviously, whoever kept this letter over the decades thought the second page more important than the first.

"This is a personal letter that I am sending to you and I want you to write to me personally today -- use the enclosed envelope which I have stamped for your convenience. Your letter will then come directly to my desk. I will expect to find some money in it. Please Don't disappoint me.

"Send what you owe use and I promise I will personally attend to the immediate mailing of your certificates and I will also personally promise to bring our road to completion at once and won't have to again urge you for more money. Write me today and don't forget to send me the balance due on your contract. I will look for your immediate reply -- Remember the fulfillment of my plans depends upon you as one of my partners.

"Your very truly,
(signed M W Savage)
"President.

"P.S. I think I have showed you how it is to your interest to pay what you are owing on your contract, but in order to make it practically certain that you will send me the balance at once, I am going to allow you a liberal discount for your immediate payment. If you will send me the balance due at once you may deduct FIVE PER CENT from the amount. Now, this certainly makes it well worth you while to pay us at once. Even if you have to borrow the amount it will pay you to do this, so as to get this Extra liberal discount. It will be a benefit to you and your company -- let's complete our road and get it started to earn big money right away.

"Do this and I promise you I won't have to again urge you to send us more money. Send us your remittance, deduct FIVE PER CENT, and I will send your certificates at once, and I will bring our road to completion by January 1st.

"M. W. S."

When it's time to sell...

2010-03-22T07:59:00.003-06:00

Collectors are well acquainted with the buying sides of their hobbies. I think most, however, would collect differently if they understood more about the realities of selling.

Unfortunately, it is hard to find good information about the selling side of collecting hobbies. I think that is why collectors so often misunderstand how much their collections will be worth when it comes time to sell.

Before my readers reach the ends of their collecting careers, I BEG them to spend time discovering what the reality might be. I first recommend they go to Stephen Goldsmith’s site at BestCoinsAndCurrency.com. There they will find well-labeled links with crucial answers about:

I your collection suitable for auction?

Determining the value of your collection.

Who will catalog your auction lots?

Setting auction reserves.

No-sales, buy-backs and returns.

I am extremely serious about this warning. The more collectors know about where they’re going with their collections, the better their chances of profit. Stephen Goldsmith knows what he’s talking about because he was heavily involved in over 220 auctions while executive vice-president with R.M. Smythe & Co. He is now a numismatic consultant and president of Best Coins and Currency.

Another excellent source is Stephen Datz’s informative and easy-to-read series of books about the stamp hobby. Datz’s stories and advice about the reality of selling stamps is almost 100% applicable to our hobby. I don’t think certificate collectors can go wrong reading any of his books, but I particularly recommend Top Dollar Paid and On the Road. You may buy his books at philatelic outlets, from Amazon and from Stephen Datz himself.

American Bank Note Archives Auction Part 5

2010-03-16T07:28:00.005-06:00

Dr. Robert Schwartz and Archives International Auctions has just published the latest installment of the American Bank Note Company archives auctions. Sales from this company’s VAST archives have been going on for an amazing 22 years!

This sale is the first to be handled exclusively by Archives International. While the previous four sales were cataloged and described by Schwartz, H.R. Harmer handled publication and sales. Because Harmer is a big “house”, its sales had to be huge. This sale is smaller than the earlier sales and I personally think that is a good thing. Not that a two-day sale is anything to snivel at. I just feel that overly large sales overwhelm collectors’ wallets. In large sales, collectors find too much they want and then back off on their bids. They will either bid less or bid on fewer lots. This is especially true for average collectors with average budgets.

So, speaking strictly for myself, I like the huge catalogs, but I feel a 260-page, fully-illustrated, full-color catalog totaling 1827 lots is about right.

As usual, the sale is split between stocks and bonds and paper money and the whole world is represented. There is, of course, a wide array of stock and bonds represented with a very good showing for railroad issues.

The sale will take place April 15 and 16 in Englewood, New Jersey. If you have not already ordered your copy of the catalog, make sure you contact Archives International at info@archivesinternational.com or visit its web site at http://www.archivesinternational.com/.

Bridge and tunnel companies – should they stay or should they go?

2010-03-02T07:47:00.005-07:00

Tunnels and bridges are nearly as crucial to railroading as locomotives and rolling stock. For that reason, I have always included a small number of those companies in my database. Here is a list of tunnel and bridge companies generally accepted as being closely related to railroading.

Am I missing any? Should I remove some? Should I remove all?

The reason I ask is because collectors seem uninterested in certificates from these kinds of companies. I have only had a couple of correspondences about bridge companies in the last 15 years and I cannot remember a single question about tunnel companies. The silence is so deafening that I can't help but wonder whether it is worth my time to track these kinds of certificates.

If you have any opinions, now is the time to tell me. Either post a comment here in this blog or contact me directly.

Baring Cross Bridge Co

Canada Southern Bridge Co

Detroit River Tunnel Co

Dunleith & Dubuque Bridge Co

Hudson River Bridge Co at Albany

Louisville Bridge Co

Louisville & Jeffersonville Bridge Co

Michigan & Canada Bridge & Tunnel Co

Moffat Tunnel Improvement District (bond shown above)

Niagara River Bridge Co

Oswego Railroad Bridge Co

Railroad Bridge Co

St Louis Merchants Bridge Co

Sault Ste Marie Bridge Co

How do you know if certificates were cancelled?

2010-02-25T16:05:00.011-07:00

Well...that depends...

Which type of cancellation are we talking about? Corporate cancellation or paper cancellation? The two are different.

Collectors in practically every field ascribe higher values to items that are intact. The less intact, the lower the value. In our hobby, collectors desire fully intact, fully issued certificates. Ideally, collectors want certificates to look like they did on the day they were issued.

(Shown is a Wagner Palace Car certificate cancelled four ways: handwritten, rubber-stamp, circular punches and punches shaped like the letter 'P'.)

Collectors recognize many different types of cancellation. Certificates are often stamped with a rubber-stamp impression that says, "Cancelled." Many certificates were cancelled with punches that spelled out the word "Cancelled" with tiny holes. Older certificates often display the handwritten word "Cancelled", although large handwritten 'X's and marks through signatures are more common.

Cancellation purposely damaged certificates to some degree. The vast majority of certificates were cancelled by holes punches that removed paper. Typical circular paper punches ranged from 1/8" to 3/4" in diameter. Holes of other shapes are less common and were rectangular or shaped into diamonds, stars, crosses, letters, hearts and just about any shape imaginable. Sometimes signatures and big chunks of paper were removed with razor blades and knives.

Less obvious are "cut cancellations" made by special, dedicated cutting devices. From the front, cut-cancelled certificates often look completely intact, but pick one up and your fingers often poke through slits in the paper.

Regardless of methods, the whole idea of cancellation was to make it obvious that documents had been used and were no longer negotiable.

What happens, though, when writing on the backs indicates certificates were transferred, but the certificates are otherwise intact? Were those certificates cancelled?

Collectors say, "No." Companies say, "Yes!"

Many companies, perhaps most, were forgivably sloppy with their paperwork. Companies received cash when they initially issued stocks and bonds. Most were thorough with their initial signing, counter-signing, stamping, and issuance. No company, however, ever made money when it touched its certificates after that point. Because of the potentially large amounts of money involved, there were many steps necessary to transfer certificates from one owner to the next. Unfortunately, all transferences cost companies money.

Our certificates show evidence that many companies skipped steps here and there. Truth be told, the final step of damaging certificates was often redundant and unnecessary. Few if any companies ever intended to let their old certificates out into the collecting world. Almost all companies incinerated their old certificates. Many companies wondered, "Why bother with an additional step of writing, punching or slicing when we're going to destroy our certificates anyway?"

When we talk about cancellations as collectors, we only care whether certificates are marked as little as possible. More properly, we are looking for certificates that do not show any typical evidence of cancellation.

Just because certificates show no evidence of cancellation does NOT mean they are still negotiable securities. From financial and legal standpoints, there is one and only one final proof of cancellation: the corporate record book. If a stock certificate was transferred to another individual, it was cancelled. If a bond was paid off, it was cancelled. Simple as that. The record book always prevails.

Companies and collectors disagree over the definition of the word "cancellation." Since corporate record books are rarely available to collectors, we can never make the definitions consistent. Companies define cancellation as an event whereas collectors define cancellation as a paper condition. Whether paper cancellation reflects the event of corporate cancellation is a matter of luck.

Getting back to the original question, the majority of collectors consider certificates uncancelled when there is no writing or paper destruction.

More certificates from the American Bank Note Company archives

2010-02-17T12:34:00.006-07:00

Dr. Robert Schwartz has announced the sale of certificates, paper money and ephemera from the archives of the American Bank Note Company. The sale will take place April 15 and 16at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Englewood, New Jersey. As with Bob's four previous sales, the catalog will be massive and should be available mid-March.

Unlike previous sales, Bob is handling the entire sale himself, a move which I personally applaud. Obviously, this means a tremendous amount of work, but I always collectors are more happy and more willing to spend when they know precisely where the proceeds are going. Dr. Schwartz has been in the business for many years and almost every collector has met him if they've attended shows in the East.

(The certificate shown above is an 1864 South Carolina stock certificate from a blockade running company. I will be most interested to see what that historic item fetches.)

The April sale will be handled entirely under the banner of Arhives International Auctions. There are currently about 500 lots planned for the stock and bond specialty. I don't know the precise percentage that will be rail-related, but you should probably expect about 150 to 200 lots. The sale will offer an additional 1100 lots involving paper money and security printing ephemera.

As I mentioned, the catalog will be availble in mid-March which is really only three weeks away. Catalogs will cost $15 postpaid (!). As always, I recommend putting in your order as soon as you possibly can. Send your email to Robert@ArchivesInternational.com or call Dr. Schwartz at 201-567-1130.

See more information about the sale (with additional fax and mail contacts) at Archives International's new web site at http://www.archivesinternational.com/

Railroad and Trains magazines database now online

2010-02-08T07:30:00.015-07:00

Several stock and bond collectors have told me they collect railroad magazines. About five years ago, I began compiling a database of information about Railroad Magazine and Trains Magazine, the two longest-running and most collectible consumer periodicals on railroading. I just finished adding that information to my web site at Railroad magazines. (Or click on the menubar at Home > Other interests.)
Frank Munsey started Railroad Man's Magazine in 1906 as an adjunct to his successful Argosy Magazine. Railroad Man's Magazine was a male-oriented "dime novel" (or novelette) monthly that told stories of high adventures and travails in railroading. Railroading had been a popular subject for story magazines since the late 1850s and it is somewhat curious that it took so long to start a dedicated publication on the subject.

Munsey's magazine was moderately successful and survived in monthly form for about thirteen years. Starting in December, 1918, the publisher tried a weekly schedule for the magazine and then tried a combination called Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine. The experiment does not seem to have worked and by May, 1919, the magazine reverted to independent form and monthly issuance.

Based on the numbers of issues I've encountered, Railroad Man's Magazine must have had modest circulation. Nonetheless, it survived and ultimately changed its name to Railroad Stories in February, 1932. Although the content did not change much, the covers of Railroad Stories were much more intriguing and colorful than its predecessor. In fact, its covers were very much in the style of detective and true crime novels of the time. This move must have kicked sales, because many more issues of Railroad Stories survive.

Like coal mining and other heavy industries, railroading had become much safer and more commoditized throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Fictional stories of train robberies, bridge collapses and fateful crashes became increasingly unrealistic and the desire for fiction gave way to a growing demand for factual articles about railroading. The magazine obviously recognized the trend and changed its name to Railroad Magazine only five years later (September, 1937). While fictional stories and poetry continued to appear for many years, content eventually switched to real history and factual reportage by the 1940s.

The demand for real facts was not lost on A.C. Kalmbach who had made a living reporting on and photographing real railroads. Kalmbach started Trains Magazine in late 1940 and even went so far as to make the cut size of his monthly periodical almost identical to his long-running competitor.

Kalmbach's focus was strictly professional and factual. He chose coated paper over pulp and thereby gained the ability to offer higher quality photographs than Railroad Magazine. The heavy reliance on photographs and costly paper meant Trains Magazine had a higher sticker price – 25¢ versus 15¢. Trains had half the pages of Railroad which meant its actual square-inch cost was almost four times higher.

While obviously covering the same subject, Trains Magazine and Railroad Magazine had noticeably different audiences. The differences are most noticeable in the designs of their covers and their advertising content.

Popular interest magazines of all descriptions began using photographs on their covers by the mid- to late 1930s. Except for a couple single-issue experiments (Nov, 1939 and Jun, 1954), Railroad Magazine relied on custom art work for its covers until 1955. Many of its covers (especially in 1939) were purposely heroic and inspirational. Several covers drew on an earlier Art Deco styles (Apr, 1950) and a few were excellent derivitives of Frederic Remington's "nocturnes" (Aug, 1940, Mar, 1941, Nov, 1948) popularized four decades earlier.

By comparison, Trains Magazines relied on real black and white photographs from its very first issue in 1940. Trains Magazine's photos, both inside and out, often bordered on "artsy," very much in the style of industrial-subject photos that appeared in Life Magazine of the era (Nov, 1940, Dec, 1940, Dec, 1954.) While there may be more, I can only find one dedicated artwork cover (Nov , 1947). The least attractive covers appeared when Trains Magazine experimented with strong graphics on its covers (May, 1954, Jul, 1955 and the abyssmally bad cover of Jul, 1959)

The two magazines also displayed obvious differences in advertising content. From its inaugural issue, Railroad Magazine had always played to a popular consumer audience. Ads included the same ones that readers could find in practically any magazine: cigarettes, Mason shoes, promos for book collections of the classics, fishing lures, the Rosicrucians and get-rich-quick schemes. Trains Magazines tried to appeal to a more world-wise market and featured travel-oriented and image advertising by all the major railroads. The professional railroading aspect was played up with ads about freight movement, reliable wheel bearings, strong diesel power and dependable trucks.

While there are several other railroad magazines with collector interest, I have only collected information about these two classic magazines. I have recorded a few thousand sales of these magazines and show high, low and average prices when possible. I currently offer images of about 270 Railroad Magazine covers and roughly 180 Trains Magazine covers. That means I have a lot of room for improvement. I solicit any new images my readers may be able to supply. If someone might like to contribute information about other magazines (real railroads only), contact me and we'll discuss adding new pages.

Magazines dated after 1980 are usually worth much less than a dollar each, so that has always been my cut-off date. However, if any of you can supply images of Railroad or Trains magazine covers dated after that time, I will be glad to extend my date range.

New Clinton Hollins catalogs

2010-01-12T07:34:00.003-07:00

Those of you who buy exclusively through eBay really need to receive Clinton Hollins' catalogs.

You see, Clinton has such a monstrous selection of certificates that he often sells certificates below prices realized on eBay. In fact, many of the certificates you see for sale on eBay have moved through Clinton's hands at one time or another.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, Clinton's catalogs are no-frills – no fancy photos, no slick paper, no insistent promos. Just simple descriptions and great prices. Each catalog is 32 pages on 5½ x 8½ white paper. Clinton normally offers special prices for those collectors who like to buy multiple color varaties. He also offers great prices for small dealers wanting to buy multiples for inventory. Make sure to check out his "Bargain Lots" catalogs, as well as his "Railroad" specialty issues.

You can see much of Clinton Hollins' inventory online at ClintonHollins.com. Contact him at

Clinton Hollins
PO Box 2711
Springfield, VA 22152-2711

New certificate rarity system now online

2010-01-06T07:43:00.003-07:00

After several years of development, I have just rolled out a new rarity system for railroad stocks and bonds. You may see it in action by searching for any certificate in your collection.

After many conversations with dealers, collectors and authors, I decided to use a 7-point system arrayed from most common to most rare.

The system is arranged like this:
R1 = likely to appear more than 10 times per year
R2 = likely to appear 4 to 10 times per year
R3 = likely to appear 1 to 4 times per year
R4 = likely to appear once every 1 to 3 years
R5 = likely to appear once every 3 to 5 years
R6 = likely to appear once every 5 to 10 years
R7 = likely to appear less than once every 10 years

R? = Rarity unknown. I reserve this designation for certificates priced under $50 which are suspected of being substantially scarcer than their prices would otherwise indicate. For instance, I would use this designation in the case where a certificate has been seen only once or twice in 30 years, but it sold for only $15. Why so cheap? Is there an unreported hoard somewhere? Was the $15 sales price a very lucky fluke for some collector?

The system does not measure populations. We can NEVER know the numbers of certificates that exist. Instead, the system measures historic appearances over the last thirty years. It gives you hints on rarity by estimating how often certificates come up for sale. The system is database-driven, so rarity estimates represent appearances as recently as the last database upload. There are currently about 980,000 appearance in the database.

See http://www.coxrail.com/Rarity.htm for a further discussion of the system and its accepted shortcomings.

Dec. 2009 issue of Scripophily mailed to members

2009-12-29T18:34:00.003-07:00

The latest full-color issue of Scripophily arrived a couple days ago. (See my announcement about the August issue for more information on supporting the International Bond and Share Society.) As before, I ask you to join me in supporting this organization which is now almost 42 years old.

Major articles to be found in this issue are:

Mexican Gold Bond Explosion
The Belga Demystified
The Thams Highway
United We Stand, Divided We Fall (tobacco war)
Adolph Had a Tunnel (Sutro Tunnel)
The Santa Fe Saga, part 2

As always, there are numerous shorter articles including reviews of worldwide auctions as well as my latest article in Cox's Corner.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this issue is the report of a Republic of Mexico £100 bond that Belgian dealer Mario Boone sold on eBay for a staggering $60,100! Why ANYONE would pay that amount is unknown. It is possible that the buyer and two other bidders all saw something that everyone else missed. Boone was unable to spot any significance with the autographs.

But that's not all. Archives International sold a similar bond (£250 denomination) on Dec 2. for an even more staggering $80,100!, also on eBay. What's up?

The article discusses the possibilities for such outlandish bids. The most reasonable suggestion involves the outstandingly mis-informed possibility that the buyers are somehow expecting to be able to redeem them for gold. While that is just plain silly (see my discussion of gold bond scams and hypes), it may also involve taxation through a series of convoluted twists.

Read all about it in the lastest Scripophily.

Prices on the Rise?

2009-12-09T07:23:00.006-07:00

I update my online database twice per month. Before uploading the database, I run a series of “cleanup" procedures. One cleanup step makes sure I display the most current record-high and record-low prices.

Only a few new record-high prices have appeared in recent years. In fact, there has been a steady procession of record-low or near-record-low prices ever since I started recording eBay sales.

My last database update was December 1 and the situation was different. This time, the numbers of new record-low and new record-high prices were nearly identical.

At first, you might think dealers would applaud this unforeseen uptick in prices. But not so fast!

On closer examination, I noticed that all new record-high prices occurred in Germany and almost all new record-low prices occurred in the U.S. Not meaning to sound alarmist, this is not a good trend for either American collectors or dealers.

Heavy selling by amateurs on eBay continues to depress prices in the U.S. EBay has effectively trained collectors to expect bargain basement low prices, even for scarce and rarely-seen certificates. Yet even with online auction prices at fifteen- and twenty-year lows, 50% to 60% of eBay certificates still go unsold. Never mind that prices are at levels that would have been considered insane a few years ago.

If we look to Europe, we see the Euro trading at a 50% premium to the dollar. Combine the weak dollar with eBay-induced low prices and European collectors have no choice but to view American certificates as dirt cheap.

At the end of November, FHW (Freunde Historischer Wertpapiere) offered 70 North American railroad certificates in its large auction #96 in Berlin. FHW's minimum starting bids are very high by American standards. Nonetheless, collectors bought 47% of North American railroad certificates offered. Some of those lots sold at prices that would scare the Hell out of most American collectors. After accounting for commission, value added taxes and the dollar-Euro conversion penalty, lots sold for 100% to 500% (!!!) of my estimated catalog prices!

(An example of the Wildwood & Delaware Bay Short Line Railroad certificate shown above sold for $50 on eBay in May. The certificate shown just sold for $258 in Berlin.)

American certificates fetched significant prices in Europe throughout 2009. Even if high prices can be blamed on the weak dollar, the disparity SHOULD be a wake-up call to American collectors. It is obvious that significant numbers of non-American collectors genuinely appreciate rarity and are willing to pay for it. If the dollar continues to weaken and if American collectors continue to ignore rarity, they will wake up some day in the future to find many rare American certificates gone.

Price disparities for collectibles will always exist. Prices always depend on where, when and how collectibles are sold. It is completely normal to see 2X price disparities in our hobby; 3X disparities are not uncommon. The price disparities we're currently seeing, though, are abnormal and 5X price differences are unlikely to linger. Nonetheless, the fact that there are such huge differences of opinion in regard to prices should concern hobbyists on both sides.

Regardless of where they live, collectors can argue that European prices are too high or that American prices are too low. They can argue that European collectors over-value rarity and second-tier autographs. They can argue that American collectors don't value rarity at all. They can argue any way they want.

They can even argue that the one inviolable law of collecting does not apply to them.

But they will be wrong.

Simply put, collectibles always move toward money.

Helmut Lange Collection for sale

2009-12-04T07:20:00.003-07:00

The massive collection of German collector Hemut Lange is coming up for sale starting December 19, 2009 in Wolfenbüttel. A second part will appear in April, 2010.

The sale is being offered by DWA (Deutsche Wertpapierauktionen GmbH), a subsidiary of FHW (Freunde Historischer Wertpapier.) I just received the 96-page catalog yesterday, meaning the sale is only two weeks away.

The catalog for the auction was put together by long-time dealer Vladimir Gutowski and Fabian Palic. Because of the size of the offering, the catalog has a different appearance than typical FHW catalogs. Everything this time is in black and white with pictures of only parts of the collection.

There are currently 865 lots in the auction, virtually all representing stocks and bonds from railroads. American railroads comprise the bulk of the collection: 610 single-item lots plus 39 multi-item lots. Many lots represent seriously rare certificates. Nine more lots represent other rail operations in North America.

The downside is that the collection is so vast that only 27% of the lots are illustrated in the catalog. I have not yet been able to find any online listing. (I will modify this blog if I hear back from Herr Gutowski). Meanwhile, there are two offsetting features I heartily applaud.

1) Several multi-item lots are illustrated. (I do not know why more auction houses don't show multi-item lots.)

2) Unlike normal European auctions, DWA's starting prices will be 80% of its lower price estimates. (I think this is a REALLY good idea.)

Again, the sale is only two weeks away. There are no listed contacts for DWA, so I heartily recommend you contact FHW immediately if you are thinking about participating in this sale. You can email FHW (info@fhw-online.com), or call (05331/9755-33) or fax (05331/9755-55). This may not be the best way to get the catalog, but it should work.

(American collectors: don't forget the multi-hour time difference. You can find the current time at WorldTimeServer.com.)

Telling Collectors About Your Sale

2009-11-27T19:49:00.003-07:00

Want me to tell collectors about your upcoming sale?

Send me a copy. (Address here.)

My only requirement is that your sale or fixed-price catalog include at least a few stocks and bonds from North American railroads.

Please let me know if there are special items you think collectors need to know about.

And please make sure you send your catalog with sufficient time for my readers to write, call, or email you for their copy.

E-mail failure rates

2009-11-17T08:13:00.003-07:00

People seem to think that ALL email gets through. It doesn't!

In fact, the U.S. Post Office, for all its problems, actually has a dramatically better delivery rate.

Research by Microsoft and others estimates that only about 99% of legitimate, non-spam email gets through. At first blush, that sounds pretty good.

In fact, it means that in a normal week, someone sends me a message about stocks and bonds that does not reach me. Unless that unknown contributor contacts me again, I won't even know the message was lost. Last week, I learned that two genealogy-related messages failed to reach me.

Obviously, many losses are due to aggressive spam filtering somewhere along the email transmittal path. Normally, the most aggressive spam filtering takes place at the last step before final delivery.

However, I used to have one contributor who could reliably get mail to me only by sending to my private Comcast account. After detective work, my ISP tracked the problem down to an overly aggressive spam filter on a single bank of servers on the East Coast. That filter was blocking all email from my correspondent's ISP which operated in eastern France and western Germany. The person who owned those particular East Coast servers refused to budge on his overly-zealous spam filtering protocol. Fortunately, email sent to my Comcast account avoided that self-appointed hall monitor.

The good thing about spam filters is that recipients can usually request their ISP (Internet service provider) to "white list" email from specific sources. I periodically make sure my correspondents are "white listed" in order to assure their email gets through unimpeded. Having problems with specific email not getting through? Tell your ISP.

Unfortunately, there are non-trivial numbers of losses caused by accidental infrastructure failures between sender and recipient. This would be the equivalent of real-life postal trucks driving into rivers every few days and losing all their letters. While everyone expects redundancy and data backups would prevent the problem, losses still occur.

Like I said, about 1% of email is lost.!

I bring this up simply to alert you that if I (or any other correspondent) do not respond to you in a reasonable amount of time, it is possible your message got lost. It happens. Why not ask if I got your message?

Help with Blank Generic Certificates

2009-10-16T10:40:00.007-06:00

I've been cataloging railroad certificates for twenty years, but have encountered only a handful of blank certificates. Why so few?

A large number of printing companies produced blank stock certificates. I call them "generic certificates" and they were usually adorned with images that might have been used by different kinds of start-up companies. Typical images included railroads, mines, oil wells, eagles, and flags.

A long-time German correspondent just sent me this lithographed example with a freight train moving right to left. Collectors have no doubt seen images like this a thousand times.

This certificate got me wondering how many more blank certificates might be out there. I simply don't know. I'm guessing that most were discarded a century ago.

I would appreciate hearing from you if you own ANY completely blank generic certificates. (With the possible exception of certificates with oil-related vignettes, all varieties of generic certificates were used at one time or another by railroad companies.) Please send 200 dpi scans to my regular email address reachable via the Coxrail web site.

Mario Boone's 43rd Auction

2009-10-01T08:16:00.005-06:00

I received Mario Boon'es wonderful new catalog a couple days ago. This will be the 43rd Boone auction and will be held in Antwerp, Oct 24 followed by Europe's largest stock and bond bourse the next day.

This sale will again feature a nice selection of U.S. railroad issues (about 55 certificates), including several certificates not commonly seen. My particular favorites include:

The Gilpin Tramway Co. (Historic Colorado line near Central City and very hard to find.)
Staten Island Rail-Road Co (Featuring a signature by Jacob Vanderbilt.)
Union Pacific Railway Co. (1880s 10-share proof.)
St Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Co. (Another hard-to-find issue with a great vignette.)
Niagara Falls & Lake Ontario Rail Road Co. (1853 bond featuring a view of Niagara Falls.)

Contact Mario at The Scripophily Center (0032-(0)-9-386-90-91) for a copy of this full-color catalog as soon as possible. I am not convinced that prices for these rarities is going to get any cheaper.

Scripophily.com 2010 calendar available

2009-09-17T06:41:00.003-06:00

Thankfully, a calendar available well before the end of the year!

Bob Kerstein has again published a beautiful 13-month calendar for 2010 featuring a classic stock or bond for each month. Like last year, the new Scripophily.com calendar is priced at $9.95, but you will receive one for free with any purchase.

As always, contact Bob at Scripophily.com or at 1-888-STOCKS6 (1-888-786-2576).

August Newsletter Online

2009-08-28T15:39:00.010-06:00

Two newsletters within a month? What's up?

Well, I had a lot more to say about the concept of rarity and how it relates — or doesn't relate — to price. This time I try to point out several serious flaws in The Myth is that says "rare is valuable."

The basic idea is that just because a collectible is scarce or rare does not mean it is automatically valuable. Someone needs to have the desire to own it. And not just one or two people, but a bunch.

I was talking with one of my car-collecting buddies the other day about the concept of demand. I pointed to a one-of-a-kind bond and asked, "So how much would you pay for this baby?"
"A dollar."

"But you collect old cars and you play golf. You can afford more."

"Okay, two dollars. I don't want to piss you off."

"What if I told you it was unique? One-of-a-kind. Only one on the planet. A whole lot rarer than those old junk heaps you collect."

"Great. I don't feel so bad about upping my offer to two bucks."

This tongue-in-cheek conversation illustrates a concept we agree on 100%. And yet so few collectors fully undertstand. If a collecting hobby is small and only a few people want something, exceedingly rare items might not be worth much at all. It does not matter what a cataloger or seller thinks collectibles should be worth. And it certainly doesn't matter what collectors originally paid. Value is determined strictly by how much future collectors want things. It does not matter whether collectibles are rare or common; prices can be very flexible.

In this issue, I examine five certificates that have historically sold for about $75. I show how many serial numbers are known and I estimate how many examples might exist. I think you'll find the numbers enlightening.

This deeper examination of rarity shows a pardoxical twist.

No matter how much we understand about the flawed and indirect relationship between rarity and price, I actually don't think it is possible to change our behavior or thinking. Not even one little bit. I suggest that the very next time we evaluate a collectible for purchase, rarity will be the first thing we will think of. No matter how much we know better, I think all collectors, including myself, unconsciously believe The Myth that "rare means valuable."

Download the August 2009 Coxrail newletter.

9th Annual Stock Certificate & Bond Show approaching

2009-08-25T08:57:00.004-06:00

I just received announcement of the next Stock and Bond show coming up in January. As before, the show will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel two miles from Dulles Airport in Herndon, Virginia, Jan 29-30, 2010.

I strongly suspect that most dealers are already informed, but if you want to set up a table at the show, you need to contact Bob Schell as soon as possible. Early bird savings end September 30.

For those of you wanting to stay at the hotel, contact Crowne Plaza at 800-227-6963 and mention the code "BON" for special rates. Again, you are advised to make reservations as soon as possible.

July 2009 issue of Scripophily mailed to members

2009-08-06T17:03:00.004-06:00

The latest issue of Scripophily is out and is better than ever. The latest issue is 36 full-color pages chock-full of news of the stock and bond hobby. Scripophily is the publication of the International Bond and Share Society (IBSS).

The publishing schedule is now three issues per year, which I think is good. Issues will be sufficiently frequent to keep readers interested in the hobby of collecting stocks and bonds, but not so frequent as to run out of stories.

Major articles this time are:

Australian Breweries

The Railway to Nowhere

London's River Crossings

Where Did All Those Cancelled Certificates Come From?

There are numerous shorter articles including:

How Does the Crisis Impact the Scripophily Market?

D-Day Discovery

Award for John Herzog

Puzzler (about a Pacific Mail Steamship printing plate)

Recurring columns include:

Society Matters

Cox's Corner

The Traveler

Auction News

Auction Reviews

Events Calendar

You will receive Scripophily with your membership which is a meager $25 per year. I know that $25 does not sound like enough. I'm pretty sure you can contribute more without receiving any major complaints.

The IBSS has honored me most graciously by naming me a member of its editorial board. Nonetheless, my opinions are my own.

I hold an extremely serious conviction that all of us take huge amounts from our hobbies. We all build collections on the countless years of experience and wisdom of collectors, dealers, researchers, authors and catalogers who have preceeded us. That means that all of us — collectors and dealers alike — owe our enjoyment and appreciation to people we can never possibly repay. Since repayment to our benefactors is impossible, our only option is to pay forward to all those unseen collectors who will follow. No, not all of us can contribute articles, research and excitement. But we can all support our hobbies through membership in organizations.

The hobby of collecting stocks and bonds is microscopic by comparison to hobbies like stamps, coins, automobiles and art. That means small organizations like the IBSS are greatly dependent on our membership. I'm not talking only about monetary involvement. I am saying that members like you and me are seriously crucial to the health of the hobby by our mere presence.

I personally ask you to please consider adding your voice and your presence to this enjoyable hobby. Join us in the International Bond and Share Society today. And receive your subscription to Scripophily in the bargain!

July newsletter - Play fair...with your heirs

2009-07-28T07:33:00.005-06:00

Collectors have this nagging habit of dying and leaving the task of selling their collections to their heirs. I've never been so lucky, but I've heard inheritance can be a good thing. On the other hand, it can be unpleasant to inherit a collection you know little about and then need to sell it. And we're not not even getting into the emotional issues.

Selling collectibles is not necessarily easy, even for the pros. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

The difficulty can be compounded, sometimes quite dramatically, if collectors give their heirs inflated expectations of value. In this issue, I talk about why it is so crucial for collectors to be honest with their heirs. They must go to great lengths to avoid exaggerating values.

You may see the latest issue at http://www.coxrail.com/newsletters/2009-07.pdf. (Or download to your computer by right-clicking on the link and choosing "Save Target As".) You may see all back issues at http://www.coxrail.com/newsletters.htm

(The number of) Sales on eBay are up

2009-07-21T17:49:00.006-06:00

I have noticed a marked increase in the number of successful stock and bond sales on eBay in the last two or three weeks. Within this observation, I can imagine seeing a few possible indications. (I'm not saying they are there; it is merely a way to interpret activity.)

1) There seems to be a pent-up demand. Collectors seem determined to buy. Never mind that no experts are claiming an end to the recession. Never mind that the unemployment rate has not improved. Never mind that business managers say they expect more layoffs in coming months. Regardless of somewhat dismal news, collectors are buying.

2) Prices are NOT up. They remain flat to somewhat down.

3) There are substantial numbers of eBay offerings relative to the number of successful sales. Unsold lots outnumber successful sales by two to four times. This suggests sellers are still setting minimum prices above actual market prices. However, the high number of offerings suggests we may be approaching capitulation. The stock market encounters a point of capitulation when stock holders give up and decide they can no longer afford to sustain further declines. At that point, they sell regardless of price. When they capitulate, they show they are no longer willing to wait for an upturn. We may be seeing that happening among weaker eBay sellers. While bad for those sellers, the market cannot genuinely improve until a definite bottom is reached.

4) There has been a most definite shift among the days that sales close. Probably 60% to 80% of the sales of collectible stocks and bonds used to close on the weekend. Sales are now closing in almost equal numbers throughout the week. I think that is a very good trend for sellers, but I have absolutely no idea why it is happening. (By having the majority of sales close almost simultaneously on the weekends, sellers were previously forcing buyers to ration their bids. Sellers never seem to understand that buyers try to avoid winning too many sales at once.)

5) This same trend (no discernible price improvement but more sales) is happening in two other areas of collectibles I track.

Third Edition Schedule

2009-07-10T08:41:00.006-06:00

Because publishing schedules always have a tendency to slip, including mine, I will NOT divulge plans for the third edition until I feel very confident things will move forward without delay. The text and cover design is finished, but I cannot afford the publishing risk right now.

My daily recording of prices unquestionably proves that average collectors are simply not spending much money on collectible stocks and bonds. Prices have been dropping for several years, and every time I think prices have hit bottom, I'm proven wrong. Demand for the rarest and most desireable items seems okay. Not strong, but okay.

It is the vast middle ground that has me concerned. Demand for all but the most desireable certificates seems very soft. Rightly or wrongly, this is my guidepost. My theory is that if average collectors aren't buying certificates, they probably have little desire to buy catalogs.

I think it unwise to risk a substantial amount of money on a new edition right now. Conceivably, if I can find compelling evidence of recovery - both in the economy and in prices of collectibles - I can issue a new edition in the spring or summer of 2010. Economists always disagree more than weather forecasters, but I am hearing few predictions of early recovery. Most predictions seem to indicate a longer recovery period. While I am aiming for a publishing date next year, I am giving only it a 50-50 chance.

I discuss this issue in more detail at Third Edition Schedule on the Coxrail site. In the meantime, I continue to collect prices and new information about certificates as I have for the last twenty years. As always, I update the online database every two weeks. That means that EVERY new certificate and every new serial number is listed online within no more than two weeks of discovery. Similarly, every new price is factored into my price estimates in the same schedule.

The Great West Exposition Train Co

2009-06-24T18:02:00.009-06:00

Certificates from this "mystery" company began appearing in March of last year. While the purpose of the company had been a mystery, the more perplexing mystery was how little evidence of its existence it had left.

Certificates are currently known only in unissued form. The company was incorporated in Colorado and its certificates were printed by A.S. Carter Stamps, Seals and Printing of Denver.

David Adams, one of my three big contributors of obscure information, finally discovered this company in a magazine that had recently been scanned and indexed by Google Books.

An article about the company appeared in the November 1903 issue of Business Woman's Magazine. It appears the company intended to carry exhibits that promoted the western states and western immigration. Seemingly, the promoters of the project considered the Chicago and San Francisco World's Fairs had suffered moral lapses.

Thanks to Ed Lewis for an image of this certificate.

New York state revenues on bonds

2009-06-19T18:24:00.006-06:00

Michael Mahler, one of my contributors, just finished a HUGE article on revenue stamps applied to bonds held by New York residents.

You can find parts 1, 2 and 3 of Mike's article on the American Revenue Association website. Unfortunately, part 4 of Mike's article exceeded the capability of the association's small website. He will post the final part once the association acquires more server space.

Mike tells me he has seen New York revenues on bonds dated as early as 1847 and as late as the 1920s. The revenue stamps he talks about in his article are most common on bonds of the 1890s to 1900s.

His article is titled, New York Mortgage Endorsement, Secured Debt, and Investment Stamp Taxes, 1911-1920. I will bet that most collectors who own more than a few railroad bonds have one of the stamps that Mike is interested in.

That is NOT to say that they are common. Quite the contrary. Some are quite hard to find. Collectors of stocks and bonds generally do not pay premiums for revenue stamps, but philatelists do. Mike points out that, "Some seen as common by scripophilists become rarities to philatelists!"

When you get to the research page of the American Revenue Association, you will find a previous article by Michael Mahler that you might also be interested in: Robert Schuyler's 1853-4 Stock Fraud on the New York and New Haven Railroad: the paper trail.

Mike sent two more stamps for illustration. You may find them on my Facebook page. (You do NOT need to be a member to see them.)

The Assassination of Colonel James Fisk, Jr.

2009-06-10T07:05:00.008-06:00

(This article and accompanying woodcut images appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Jan 20, 1872. James Fisk was Jay Gould's partner in his early railroad empire adventures, especially his takeover of the Erie Railroad. The Gould and Fisk era is probably best described in Maury Klein's, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. Fisk was a larger than life character, ultimately undone by his behavior. In contrast, Gould preferred the shadows.)

WHEN in an article in our editorial columns we commented upon the lapse of time that had intervened since our city had been visited by anything like a genuine " sensation," it was not dreamt by us that even before that article should reach the eye of the public such an appalling tragedy would occur as that which, on the evening of January 6th, produced an excitement in our midst rarely equaled by the simple announcement of the death of a single member of our vast community.

The facts connected with the tragedy; as far as we have been enabled to collate them from the most reliable sources, are as follows :

On the morning of Saturday, January 6th, a hearing had taken place at the Yorkville Police Court before Justice Bixby in the matter of the charge of libel prepared by Mrs. Helen Josephine Mansfield and Edward S. Stokes against risk. After the conclusion of the examination for the day, Stokes, accompanied by his counsel, Hon. John McKeon and Assistant District Attorney Fellows, repaired to Delmonico's, at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, and there partook of a lunch. While there, it is said, it was announced to Stokes that the Grand Jury had found an indictment against him for a conspiracy to extort money from Fisk. Immediately, upon hearing this, he left the party, but without making any remark which would lead any of those who were in his company to suppose that he was bent upon such a deed as assassinating a fellow-being.

Stokes, on leaving Delmonico's, at once proceeded to the Grand Central Hotel, where by some means he had ascertained Colonel Fisk was to call. He was observed by the attachés of the hotel lounging around the corridors and barroom of the place, apparently unconcerned and without any care. He seemed in good spirits, and noticed several acquaintances who met him there.

At a quarter past four Fisk drove up to the ladies' entrance, and stepping out of his carriage, inquired of the door-boy, John Redmond, if Mrs. Morse and her daughter wore in. This Mrs. Morse is said to be the widow of the man who gave Colonel Fisk his first start in the world. The hall-boy answered that he thought Mrs. Morse and her eldest daughter had gone out, but that the younger Miss Morse was in her grandmother's room. Colonel Fisk requested the boy to show him up, and the two started, the colonel leading.

At that moment, and before Colonel Fisk had mounted more than two steps, Stokes suddenly made his appearance from some place of concealment, and a shot rang out, which struck Fisk in the abdomen, two inches to the right of the navel and three inches above it, passing downward, backward, and to the left, inflicting a terrible wound. Fisk fell, shouting, " Oh !" and immediately scrambled to his feet again, when Stokes once more leveled his revolver and fired another shot, the ball passing through and out of Fisk's left arm without touching the bone. The latter turned to run, but fell a second time, and slid down to the bottom of the stairs, where he was picked up by the crowd, who had gathered on hearing the report of the pistol, and carried up-stairs to an adjoining rum, where he was laid upon the bed, and the house physicians summoned. Stokes appears to have made little, if any, attempt at escape, but walked quietly downstairs through the main public staircase, and was about leaving the hotel by the rear entrance when he was stopped by Mr. Powers, the hotel proprietor, and some of his employes. The pistol (a four-barreled one) with which the deed was done was shortly after found, with two chambers discharged, under one of the lounges in the ladies' parlor, where it had evidently been thrown by the assassin before descending the stairs.

The police were summoned, and upon their arrival Stokes quietly submitted to arrest, and was escorted to the Mercer Street station, where he was detained until the arrival of the coroner, who, about half-past six, repaired to the hotel, and there, having impanneled a jury, proceeded to take the ante-mortem deposition of the victim. Upon Stokes being brought before him, Colonel Fisk fully identified him as the person who had fired the shots.

Dr. Tripler, the hotel surgeon, was in Fisk's room within a few minutes of the shooting, and probed the wound in the abdomen without success, for the purpose of finding the ball. He made him as comfortable as possible, and awaited the arrival of the other surgeons, who had been sent for before proceeding further.

Soon after this Police Surgeon Beach made his appearance, quickly followed by Drs. Sayre, White, Folsom and Wood. Upon the arrival of Dr. Wood a consultation immediately took place, when it was decided to hold an examination, and extract the ball, if possible. Jay Gould, James Irving, William M. Tweed, John Chamberlain, Jay Gould's clerk, Mrs. and the two Misses Morse, Colonel Hooper and wife, Colonel Fisk's brother-in-law and sister, and several other relatives, were present, having come in response to telegrams stating the colonel a condition.

At about seven o'clock his counsel, Mr. Shearman, who had been sent for, proceeded to draw his will, which was soon accomplished, and the document was signed by Fisk in a firm and distinct band. It has since been announced, that by this will he leaves all his property to his wife, subject to a legacy to his sister, Mrs. Hooker, of $100,000 ; an annuity of $3,000 for the support of his father and mother, and annuities of $2,000 each in favor of the two Misses Morse, until their marriage.

The surgeons were obliged to administer chloroform before they could proceed with the examination. The hole was large enough to have been made by a minie ball. Very little hemorrhage was found, and it was therefore concluded that none of the large vessels had been penetrated. It was feared, however, that the ball had gone through the liver, which lies in a direct line with its course through the body. At eleven o'clock the physicians held a consultation. Dr. Carnochan was called in to assist. It was decided that nothing more could be done for Mr. Fisk until Sunday morning, and as he was doing at the time remarkably well, no attempt to extract the ball was made.

The night dragged wearily its slow hours along at the hotel, while the watchers in the room where Fisk was lying, disregarding the faint lightening of the approaching dawn, waited with intense anxiety in the short spaces that elapsed between each opinion given by the attending physicians about his condition. The circle of thoughtful faces looked at times strangely wan and haggard, as the features, relaxed in involuntary forgetfulness, betrayed truly the nature of the thoughts that were driving one another through each brain. For, despite the common expectancy and the commoner hope that death would not at least come very speedily, a foreboding, inexplicable but not less depressing, seemed to have settled upon all. This could not have been from any betrayal of feeling by the medical attendants, for their faces wore studiously cheerful looks, especially whenever the prostrate man showed any signs of consciousness of his surroundings.

At seven o'clock Sunday morning, it was announced that he was fast sinking, and that the danger of a sudden ending of his intense agony was very great. His pulse was at this time 130. Dr. Fisher went down-stairs in a hurried manner and asked something of the night clerk ; then went back again. He looked very anxious.

Immediately after this, when the hand of the clock pointed a quarter after seven, a carriage driven very rapidly, the horses, wet and dappled with the foam that flew from their nostrils and congealed in the cold air, stopped short at the door. The coachman sprang from his perch, pulled open the door and helped out a lady in a dark traveling-dress, who stepped wearily to the ground. She walked quickly into the portico. This was Mrs. Fisk. She bad come from Massachusetts, in obedience to a telegram from her husband, announcing his condition. She displayed great agitation and distress upon reaching his bedside. He continued to sink gradually, remaining in an almost unconscious state until about eleven o'clock in the morning, when, in spite of all that medical skill could accomplish, the irrevocable summons came, and he who on the previous afternoon had been in the full enjoyment of life and health, was now a lifeless corpse, surrounded by a band of mourning relatives and friends.

At two o'clock in the afternoon the body was placed in a casket, and borne in a hearse from the hotel to Mr. Fisk's late residence on Twenty-third Street, in the rear of the Grand Opera House ; there the remains were placed in an ice casket in Mrs. Fisk's private chamber.
Visitors began to pour in, and Twenty-third street, in front of the house, was almost blocked with carriages.

The post-mortem examination of the body was held on Sunday night at half-past nine o'clock, at his late residence in Twenty-third Street. Drs. Janeway and Marsh conducted the examination. Drs. Wood, Sayre, White, Phelps, Tripler and Fisher, with Deputy-Coroners Beach, Marsh and Shine, were also present to assist if necessary. The result of the examination, which was somewhat lengthy, was, first : The wound in the left arm was a flesh wound, the ball passing directly through the arm, entering one inch below the elbow-joint, passing through the inner border of the biceps muscle, and making its exit through the posterior aspect of the arm. The fatal wound in the abdomen entered six inches above the umbilicus, and one inch and a half to the right of the median line, passed downward into the left through the omentum and mesentery, piercing two loops of the small intestine, and was found in the left inguinal region, about twenty-two inches below the point of entrance.

There was little or no hemorrhage. All the organs were examined, and the brain, the heart and the kidneys being found in a very healthy condition. A great deal of fat was observed in the omentum and parietes of the abdomen. The examination was concluded at half-past ten.
The funeral obsequies in the city took place on Monday, the 8th inst. The remains reposed in the entrance-hall on the west floor of the Erie building at 11 o'clock. The casket was appropriately decked with wreaths, crosses and cut flowers. All persons were admitted to see the body.
At half-past one o'clock the remains were escorted by the Ninth and other regiments to the New Haven Depot. Thence the cars bore the body away to the quiet New England town of Brattleboro', Vt., where it will be interred.

Short funeral ceremonies were held at Colonel Fisk's residence in Twenty-third Street. The Rev. Dr. Flagg, chaplain of the Ninth Regiment, officiated. The remains were forwarded by the New Haven Railroad.

The Grand Opera House was closed Monday evening.

Shortly after nine o'clock Sunday morning a carriage drove up to the Tombs entrance on Franklin Street. From it alighted Captain Burns, of the Mercer Street police, Stokes, the murderer, and two officers. Stokes looked nervous and sorrow-stricken, but he assumed an air of indifference as he passed the portal of the prison. He said to Captain Burns : " It's just about a year since I've been in this office." The prison being quite full, Stokes was confined temporarily in the same cell with Haggerty, who is charged with stealing the city vouchers. He is said to have expressed to Haggerty a confident expectation that he would be out in a few weeks ; but this remark, if made at all, was probably before he had been informed of the fatal result.

(The text below the woodcut does not indicate who the people watching over Fisk's death bed may have been. The woman on her knees weeping was almost certainly his wife. I strongly suspect the beaded man standing a few feet right of the bed was Jay Gould.)

Rarity (again!)

2009-06-07T18:03:00.003-06:00

Readers, I BEG you. I mean that I am sincerely begging you, in the strongest possible way, to understand the meaning of the word "rare".

If the word "rare" is being used to describe an item for sale, then "rare" is being used primarily as a marketing term.

I have argued time and time again that every seller using the word "rare" is trying to convince you that there is a direct connection between rarity and value. There is not. Value reflects desireability. There is a 100% direct connection between desireability and value. Sellers desparately want you to believe that rare items are desireable. Many are. But sadly, many rare certificates are hardly desireable at all.

American Bank Note Company security printing

2009-06-03T07:10:00.004-06:00

Here is a view of the printing department at American Bank Note Company in the late 1860s. There are probably 30 workers visible in addition to the guard at the top of the center stairway.

This factory scene took place in the penthouse of the Merchant’s Exchange Building at 48 Wall Street in Manhattan (55 Wall Street under the later street numbering system.) This location had been the previous headquarters of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson Co. You can see the penthouse in the view of the building’s exterior.

These images appear in The Story of the American Bank Note Company by William H. Griffiths (1958.) The engraver of the exterior view is unrecorded. The bottom right corner of the interior view is signed "A. H. Jocelyn", probably Albert Higley Jocelyn (1827-1900), an engraver covered briefly in Gene Hessler’s The Engraver’s Line. Albert Jocelyn’s uncle was Nathaniel Jocelyn, one of the founders of the American Bank Note Company in 1858.

It appears that ABNCo occupied its rented space at the Merchant’s Exchange Building between May 1860 and sometime in 1867.

During this period, the vast majority of ABNCo’s business was printing money for both the Federal government and private businesses. Its money printing endeavors increased throughout the late 1860s with increasing numbers of orders coming from other countries.

During the time ABNCo was located in the Merchant's Exchange, its printing of stocks and bonds was probably minimal. My database can identify only 36 extant varieties of railroad stocks and bonds that ABN had printed between 1860 and 1867.

Unfortunately for ABN, the Federal government took over all much of its own currency printing in 1874. By 1877, the government was printing all its own money. This move forced ABN to shift to printing stamps and money for foreign governments as well as stocks and bonds for domestic businesses. This switch can be seen in the number of certificates printed by ABN after 1870.

No one knows how many certificate varieties ABN may have printed during the last decades of the 19th century, but it must have been huge. Counting only railroad certificates, my database shows 277, 1,041 and 725 distinct varieties printed during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s respectively. Assuming that the surviving population of certificates is only a fraction of what ABN may printed, the company probably created two to five new varieties of certificates each week. Throw in all the security printing for non-railroad businesses as well as all its foreign business clients and we can see its engraving endeavors were truly staggering!

Cherrelyn Horse Car in Denver

2009-05-26T07:32:00.003-06:00

This was apparently the last horse car used in Denver and survived at least into the 1900s. I do not know what system it may have operated on nor whether it was officially incorporated.

This favorite photo appeared on the cover of Happy Home Chats from Feb. 10, 1936. (Happy Home Chats was a weekly 4-page promotional newletter from Denver's Happy Home Bakers.).

The horse would pull the car and passengers to the top of a gradual hill near today's Englewood. On the downhill trip, the horse would stand on the rear platform and ride down in comfort.

11x17 scanners

2009-04-30T12:30:00.010-06:00

I receive numerous requests asking me to recommend scanners capable of imaging stocks and bonds in one pass. You can always scan certificates in two or three passes and then stitch images together. However, if you go that direction, your images will look pretty scuzzy unless you invest in good (by that I mean Photoshop) image software. For the average non-techie collector, I strongly suggest it is easier and dramatically more time effective to try buy a large scanner.

Yes, there is the price issue. While letter-size scanners are almost disposable items, 11 x 17 scanners can be very pricey.

To be useful for collectors, scanners need to be

flatbed (flat glass surface)
capable of scanning 11 x 17 (officialy designated "A3" size)
affordable
have acceptable software

Stay away - far away - from multi-function scanners or scanners with document feeders. Unless you like living dangerously, never let machinery grab your certificates.

Here are the large flatbed scanners currently available.

1. Epson Expression 10000XL. This is a serious, serious workhorse. and the one I use. It has proven extremely reliable. This scanner comes with good scanning software.

2. Epson GT-20000. I don't know anything about this machine, but if it's anything like the 10000XL, it ought to be great. Let me know if you're familiar with this scanner.

Mustek ScanExpress A3 USB 1200 Pro. One of my correspondents bought one just to scan certificates. His images look good and he says he's very pleased with his purchase. These are extremely affordable machines, so probably perfect for the hobbyist.

UMAX Powerlook 2100XL. I cannot speak to this device, but we used an ancient UMAX for years. Dollar for dollar, it was a terrific investment.

Avision FB6080E. Unlike any of the other scanners, this one has glass almost to the edge of the scanner body. This allows you to scan book pages very easily.

Plustek Optibook A300. Another large format flatbed scanner primarily designed to make it easy to scan large books face down without trashing the binding. The list price on this scanner is higher than the other scanners in this list.

Several other companies (Ricoh, Xerox, Bell & Howell) offer large format "flatbed" scanners heavily adorned with document feeders. They are expensive machines intended for large businesses, so not considered here as appropriate for collectors.

It appears that most large companies like HP, Canon, Microtek, Kodak and Fujitsu have abandoned the 11 x 17 size flatbed scanner market for us ordinary consumers. If a big fan of those companies, you can still buy older and discontinued models online. However, be warned that you never know how much useful life is left in the bulbs. Repairs are often possible, of course, but frequently more expensive than replacement.

Arguing against jargon

2009-04-25T10:22:00.008-06:00

I think we should all applaud our hobby for using very, very little jargon. I think this is especially amazing when you consider that every collectible certificate came from the world of finance, a profession inundated with arcane and obscure terminology.

I just did a search in the current issue of Scripophily, the quarterly publication of the International Bond and Share Society. I saw no jargon whatsoever.

Now, that is not to say that every single word would be immediately understandable to a novice. Words like "specimen", "proof", "vignette", "preferred", and even "scripophily" (the official name of the hobby) can be confusing. However, I classify those words as necessary terminology and fully recognize that the boundary between terminology and jargon can be fuzzy.

Most collectible bonds are "first mortgage coupon bonds". A novice may not know what a first mortgage coupon bond is, but the term cannot really be simplified. Besides, the words appear on bonds.

However, if a description were shortened to "1885 7% 1st", we would be solidly in the realm of jargon. Even experienced collectors might not know the description referred to a 7% first mortgage bond issued in 1885.

To me, the test is often simple. If a simple word can be substituted for a confusing one, then the confusing word is probably jargon.

Take "recto" and "verso", for instance.

These are Latin words for "right" and "back." With the exception of a handful of people in the teaching and clerical professions, no one really understands, let alone speaks, Latin. "Front" and "back" don't sound terribly professional, but their meanings are crystal clear. "Recto" and "verso" are therefore jargon words. (In truth, "recto" refers to the right hand page in a book meant to be read first. Its use in describing certificates is, in my opinion, a little misguided to begin with.)

In some cases, jargon is used to make writers or speakers sound professional and educated. It is a time-worn rule that if you spout off a little Latin, you sound like a pro.

And then, there are terms that serve definite purposes in one profession or hobby and somehow get stolen and cludged onto another. They are not really jargon so much as "Frankenstein words."

One of those ugly monsters is the term "mint condition". Here was a perfectly good term used in the coin hobby in years past. Coins are minted, so the term "mint condition" had its place. The term was abandoned when collectors accepted the fact that coins came from mints in wide ranges of conditions. Today, coin collectors refer to those conditions as various "mint states."

In a strange paradoxical twist of fate, the abandoned term "mint condition" lives on as a Frankenstein term in various collectible paper hobbies, including stock and bond collecting. How is it that "mint condition" can be used to describe pieces of paper that may never have been within a thousand miles of a mint? Was there ever a collector of paper who thought paper was minted?

I maintain a large glossary of terms related to the hobby of collecting stocks and bonds. Please contact me if you ever encounter jargon or Frankenstein words that need clarification.

Prices remain schizophrenic

2009-04-21T06:58:00.008-06:00

I admit it.

I am confused about the direction of prices for collectible stocks and bonds. Some prices are up. Many are down. Prices for some items should be down, but are actually up. And vice versa. As I said a few months ago, prices are wacky.

Mario Boone's auction a month ago in Antwerp (the next listing down) was very curious. Overall, Mario sold about 60% of the lots offered. That percentage was abnormally high for a European sale. Having said that, lots that featured North American railroads only sold half as well as the rest of the sale. In part, I think those low sales percentages reflected overly high owners' reserve amounts rather than market disinterest.

At the other end of the market, the number of certificates being sold on eBay is down substantially. Regardless of sellers' proclamations that their certificates are "rare", most certificates being sold on eBay right now are rather ordinary. And that is where it gets really interesting.

I am seeing that scarcer certificates are, by and large, establishing new lows. At the same time, prices for more common certificates – the certificates you see week in, week out – are moving up.

What the heck is going on ?!? Apparent trends just don't seem to be making a lot of sense.

A few years ago, MK&T certificates with Jay Gould's autograph routinely sold for $350-$400. Lately, some have broken the $175 barrier and are now challenging the $150 level. Certificates with rather common imprinted revenues have been selling for 50% to 100% more than they used to. Prices for very common certificates are up. Prices for medium common to medium scarce certificates are down.

Yes, we can certainly attribute some of this odd price behavior to the global downturn and a general feeling of caution, if not outright fear. It has always been the rule that when people need to liquidate, they sell for any price they can get.

However, if we go back to Mario Boone's sale, we can see that some sellers are apparently refusing to capitulate. Fortunately for those sellers, some collectors are behaving as if they believe this is a pefect time to buy. Boone's sale proves to me that some collectors are continuing to buy and are continuing to pay strong prices.

I'm back to where I began. I can't say whether prices are going to drop further, head higher, or stay schizophrenic. I am baffled.

Mario Boone Auction Catalog 42 Available

2009-03-09T06:54:00.012-06:00

A pair of excellent Mario Boone auction catalogs just arrived. In my opinion, these are Boone's best yet and he has some wonderfully scarce and desirable certificates inside.

This is Boone's 25th year selling collectible stock and bonds, so all year long he has been offering "Silver Jubilee" specials. That is why he has a three-day sale and two catalogs this time.

Mario offers a hugely diverse selection of 1975 lots from all around the world. Of that number, I count 328 United States lots. My interest, of course, is railroad issues from Panama to the Arctic circle. I count 56 lots in my railroad specialty.

These are not your typical lots of railroad certificates. I see several lots of scarce and rare certificates that are almost never seen.

Perhaps my favorites are two (!) certificates from the Maxwell Land Grant & Railway Company. For the real specialist, there is a Niles & New Lisbon Railway piece with James Fisk's signature. Even collectors with multiple Vanderbilt signatures don't have a Fisk! These only appear every few years.

Speaking of Vanderbilt, Mario is offering a receipt for 2nd mortgage bonds of the Hudson River Railroad signed by "C. Van Derbilt" (aka, the Commodore.) The start price on this item is €4,500. A couple of years ago, I would have said that price was too low. Today, I suspect Mario's start price is fair.

(Yes, I do look at other things! There is a Standard Oil Trust with J.D. Rockefeller's signature. Or how about a Brigham Young autograph as president on a Zion's Mercantile stock? There is also an uncancelled Buffalo Bill Cody signature on a Cody-Dyer Arizona Mining & Milling certificate. And gobs more.)

Among other seldom seen certificates is one that might be overlooked by many collectors. There is one bond from the St Louis & St Joseph Railway which I've never seen one before. Of course, Mario is also offering one of the ever-popular stock certificates of the Harrisburg Portsmouth Mount Joy & Lancaster Rail Road bearing Thomas Scott's signature.

As usual, Mario's two catalogs are heavily illustrated and all in color. Images of ALL lots are available online. In fact, the entire two catalogs are available online at Booneshares.com. The sales will take place March 20-22 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Antwerp, Belgium. European collectors already know to expect "Europe's biggest scripophily bourse" on Sunday.

I want to stress to American collectors that the dollar is currently at a six-year high against the Euro, so you won't be so heavily penalized by foreign exchange rates. And for those of you wondering, but too polite to ask, yes, Boone's catalogs are all in English.

The full auction offering is already online. However, if you want to receive a beautiful printed catalog, e-mail Mario Boone, at Centrum voor Scriptophilie BVBA in Deinze, Belgium, mario.boone@skynet.be.

Counting cancellation types

2009-02-24T18:11:00.006-07:00

I am conducting a census of types of cancellations that appear in pictures of stock certificates. I hope to do the same with bonds sometime later this year.

So far, I have had time to examine only about 3,500 images. I hate to admit it, but I had never really noticed the large percentage of certificates that are cancelled by multiple methods. It appears that about 45% of all stock certificates are cancelled by two to as many as four different methods. For instance, the current census shows 27% of all stocks show both punch cancellations and rubber stamp cancellations.

By the time I examine another couple thousand certificates, I hope to learn if there are any trends of types of cancellations by date. It appears pen cancellations were the only method of stock certificate cancellation until the 1850s or 1860s. I am not sure, however, when pinhole cancellations first appeared.

One of the things I have already discovered is that “machine-gun” cancellations (rows of punch cancels) were used very, very sparsely on stock certificates, while they seem relatively common on bonds.

hand punch cancellations	57.8%
machine punch cancellations	0.5%
pinhole cancellations	17.3%
pen cancellations	34.4%
crayon or china marker cancellations	1.4%
rubber stamp cancellations	41.1%
hole cancellations	3.7%
cut out cancellations	1.4%
typed cancellations	0.5%

I have a special page on Coxrail.com where I explain the different types of cancellations seen on collectible certificates.

There are a large and unknown number of stock certificates that are cancelled by essentially invisible methods. For instance, a huge number of Chicago Burlington & Quincy stock certificates were cancelled by series of three 'V' shaped cut cancellations. I have a good picture of these cancellations on my cancellation page. While those cancellations are quite severe, they do not appear in any photographs or scans. Note also that many of these CB&Q certificates are rubber-stamped 'Cancelled' on the backs, not the fronts. To the scanner, many appear completely uncancelled.

Hammer cut cancellations and spindle cancellations are equally hard to see in ordinary images. For that matter, pinhole cancellations are sometimes very difficult to see and are probably undercounted in my census.

I would like to get a handle on the percentage of hidden cancellations. Perhaps the best way is to ask you to report certificates and serial numbers that show these types of hard-to-see cancellations. Please contact me through the Coxrail.com web site. By locating your certificates in the online database, you can report cancellations for specific certificates very easily. You may also find a link to my email at the bottom of every page.

Poor's Manuals Online

2009-02-01T18:48:00.008-07:00

Poor's Manuals of Railroads

Internet Archive

Google Books

1868 (vol 1, at Google Books)

1874 (vol 7, at Internet Archive)

1876 (vol 9, at Internet Archive)

1877 (vol 10, at Internet Archive)

1878 (vol 11, at Internet Archive)

1880 (vol 13, at Internet Archive)

1881 (vol 14, at Internet Archive)

1882 (vol 15, at Internet Archive)

1884 (vol 17, at Internet Archive)

1885 (vol 18, at Internet Archive)

1887 (vol 20, at Internet Archive)

1891 (vol 24, at Internet Archive)

1892 (vol 25, at Internet Archive)

1893 (vol 26, at Internet Archive)

1894 (vol 27, at Internet Archive)

1895 (vol 28, at Internet Archive)

1896 (vol 29, at Internet Archive)

1897 (vol 30, at Internet Archive)

1898 (vol 31, at Internet Archive)

1899 (vol 32, at Internet Archive)

1901 (vol 34, at Internet Archive)

1902 (vol 35, at Internet Archive)

1903 (vol 36, at Internet Archive)

1917 (at Google Books)

Railroad System Maps on Certificates

2009-01-31T12:35:00.006-07:00

I just added a new page to the Coxrail site where I collected images of route maps used on stock certificates of the Illinois Central Railroad. I can confirm that the company used five, possibly six, versions of maps of its system between 1883 and 1947. To my knowledge, no other company used as many different maps as the IC.

A quick check of the database suggests twenty companies used system maps on at least one certificate variety. While one might think companies would have decorated their certificates with system maps more extensively, we must remember that maps would have offered little security against counterfeiting. Even crude vignettes of human forms are harder to counterfeit than simple line maps.

Another reason we see so few route maps is that railroad companies were constantly modifying their systems. Their systems were in a constant state of flux as their built new lines, abandoned others and bought and sold companies with connecting lines.

Companies that are known to have used line maps on their certificates:

Alaska Central Railway Co (stocks)
Boston & New York Air Line Rail Road Co (stocks)
Canada Southern Railway Co (bonds)
The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co (stocks)
Chicago & Canada Southern Railway Co (bonds)
Eastern Railway Co of Minnesota (bonds)
The Electric Signagraph & Semaphore Co (stocks)
Estados Unidos de Mexico (Ferrocarril Nacional de Tehuantepec aid bonds)
Florida Atlantic & Gulf Central Rail Road Co (bonds)
Illinois Central Rail Road Co (stocks)
Interborough Rapid Transit Co (stocks)
Jacksonville Traction Co (stocks)
The Mississippi & Atlantic Rail Road Co (bonds)
The New York Central Railroad Co (bonds)
New York & Coney Island Railroad Co (stocks)
The New York Elevated Rail Road Co (stocks)
New York Ontario & Western Railway Co (stocks)
Norfolk & Western Railroad Co (bonds)
Seaboard Air Line Railway (bonds, on back)
Southern Railway Equipment Trust (bonds)

Old References to Stocks and Bonds

2009-01-24T09:45:00.008-07:00

There are a few historic references to specific old securities. R.M. Smythe's books are probably the most well-known. He compiled his lists as an effort to buy and redeem old securities (mainly bonds) that still retained value. Smythe was in the business for many years, so he must have been successful. Many of the bonds he sought at the time are now rare or non-existant.

David Adams compiled lists of the more acquirable references and I offer them here as a starting pointing for your research. Some of these references are getting very hard to find, but you can often borrow them through inter-library loans. Some appear from time to time in stock and bond auctions, particularly Spink Smythe sales.

Fisher, Robert D. 1935, 2600 Old and Inactive Security Issues of Definite Value.

Smythe, Roland Mulville, 1904, Obsolete American Securities and Corporations.

Smythe, Roland Mulville, 1911, Obsolete American Securities and Corporations, Second Volume,: Illustrated with photographs of important repudiated bonds. (This volume is available online at Google Books.)

Smythe, Roland Mulville, 1929, Valuable Extinct Securities: The secret of the obsolete security business. (The is the most easily acquirable reference to old securities, often available at Amazon, Alibris and Abe Books.)

Smythe, Roland Mulville, 1939, Smythe's Valuable Extinct Securities Guide.

January newsletter online

2009-01-19T09:37:00.007-07:00

My latest newsletter is finally finished and online.

In this issue, my main discussion is about how to ship collectible certificates. With the tremendous growth of amateur online sellers, the number of certificates damaged in transit seems to have increased. That is certainly my personal experience. While I don't have any statistics on overall losses, more of my correspondents have reported receiving damaged goods in the last six months than at any similar previous period.

It appears to me that many amateur eBay sellers just plain don't know how to ship paper. There are others, seemingly more experienced, who should know better but are cutting too many corners trying to save pennies on postage and packaging. Some people are actually shipping certificates in bubble envelopes! Huh?!?!?

So I thought it was time to go back to basics and review the concepts of shipping paper. I make the analogy that shipping paper collectible is like surgery: First, Do No Harm!

My theme of illustrations this time is a collection of logos and monograms used by printing and engraving companies on stocks and bonds. I am probably missing something, but I can only find three companies that used ornaments to promote corporate identity. (The monogram at left is from the Franklin-Lee Bank Note Company.)

These days, you can't even watch a television show without seeing a logo in the bottom right corner. But, with the exception of the Goes Lithographic Company, logos and monograms are virtually absent from certificates.

American Bank Note Company Archives, part IV

2009-01-16T13:11:00.004-07:00

Just off the press is the latest monster auction catalog from H.R. Harmer. This huge 550-page, full-color catalog is the fourth installment offering specimens, proofs and all sorts of ephemera from the American Bank Note Company archives.

As with its predecessors, Dr. Robert Schwartz described the collection which this time includes stocks, bonds, and huge numbers of world banknotes.

By my reckoning, there are 2,355 lots up for sale, all illustrated in full color. Stocks and bonds comprise about 1,000 lots. I do not have an accurate count, but roughly 320 lots are related to U.S. railroads with possibly another 50 related to railroads from other North American countries. A few additional lots offer railroad vignettes.

The sale will take place over a span of three days from (February 18 to February 20) at Harmer's main office in Bethel, Connecticut. As before, Harmer's buyer's commission on successful bids remains at 15%. I advise contacting Harmer as soon as possible to secure a copy of this crucial catalog.

December issue of Scripophily published

2008-12-31T14:06:00.005-07:00

The latest issue of Scripophily arrived this week. If you have not yet received your copy, it is because you need to take a few minutes to join the International Bond & Share Society at scripophily.org. Dues, which include your subscription to Scripophily, are £12 per year.

This issue is the stunning first product of Max Hensley, the new Chief Editor. The magazine retains its square format, but has moved to 40 pages in full color. The magazine is currently scheduled for three issues per year.

Please join your fellow enthusiasts in supporting the IBSS.

Spink-Smythe Sale Catalog 292 Out

2008-12-26T12:24:00.003-07:00

Right before Christmas I received the latest Spink-Smythe catalog. This is a beautiful 4-color catalog offering around 1,800 lots this time. The sale is divided into five sessions, scheduled to take place in New York, January 15 to 17.

This time, the bulk of the lots are coins, currency, and autographs. Only about 348 lots are related to stocks and bonds, and of that number, only 52 are railroad issues from North America. There are a few more lots among the autographs related to railroad personalities including one lot with Gould's autographs and another with William H. Vanderbilt's.

I am especially curious to see how prices will behave. I'd expect to see common and intermediate-scarcity items sell fairly cheaply. Higher-rarity items, though, are complete unknowns. Late 2008 prices from Europe show schizophrenic behavior where some items fetched absurdly high prices in the face of the declining economy. I just don't know what to expect!!

New stock and bond calendar for 2009

2008-12-11T07:19:00.002-07:00

Bob Kerstein of Scripophily.com had just published a new full-color stock and bond calendar for next year. Images of classic items include United States Steel, Indian Motorcycles, Playboy and Standard Oil trust. Appearing for the month of June is what I'd call a unique essay or mockup for a Ford certificate that was never actually issued. Representing the railroad industry are a couple of certificates from the Bodie & Benton and the New-York & Harlem. Representing current problem companies are examples from Lehman Brother, Countrywide and Morgan Stanley.

You may purchase your copy of the Scripophily calendar from Scripophily.com for $9.95. Having shipped tons of things at the time of year, please let me advise ordering quickly.

Prices are absolutely wacky right now.

2008-11-25T07:27:00.003-07:00

There has not been a lot going on in stocks and bonds - unless you count insanity!

With the collapse of financial markets and an assured recession that will last one or more years, it seemed certain that prices for collectibles in general would soften. Prices in our hobby, however, have been at 10-year lows for over a year, so I am really quite uncertain how much further prices will fall.

So far, prices have not collapsed, but they remain soft. However, prices seem much less predictable than I think I have ever seen. Prices are all over the board! Price are both absurdly high and pathetically low at the same time.

In early October, I saw a bond from the Mexican Pacific Railway sell for a very strong $180! I had not seen the bond sell for awhile and was surprised at the strong showing.

Obviously, in live auction situations, it takes a minimum of TWO people to bid prices up. High prices don't happen in a vacuum. While the winner ultimately paid $180, there had to have been at least one other bidder willing to pay $160 to $170.

(Yes, high minimum starting prices are popular in European auctions and they often limit sales to single bidders. In that respect, "auctions" with high starting prices approach the definition of fixed-price sales. In those cases, sellers essentially take over the role of one bidder. By saying, "I'm willing to hold onto these item at these starting prices," sellers are putting in first bids. If no one is willing to pay more, then sellers' implied "bids" win. While there are few "absolute" auctions in the U.S., lower starting prices make U.S. auctions of certificates seem more competitive.)

Then this morning, I saw another example of the same bond sell on eBay for a mere $29 at a "Buy It Now" price. This is what I mean by insane prices. One certificate sold for six times! as much as a nearly identical one. How can we perceive a market direction when prices are so wacky?

In mid October I saw several U.S. certificates sell in the U.K. for what I considered borderline insane prices. Several lots sold for amounts two to five times more than reasonable collectors would have paid. Remember, it takes at least two to tango in genuine live auctions. Hopefully, they saw something in person that had been undescribed in the catalog. Maybe there were autographs. Maybe there were imperf revenues. Maybe there were multiples or undescribed extras. Without expending a lot of energy, there's no way for me to know.

All I can tell for sure is that prices are currently displaying crazy prices ranges right now. If you are a collector picking up certificates at the low end, good for you! Keep it up. If you are participating at the high end, then I sincerely suggest you step back, take a deep breath, and be sure you know what you're doing.

Yes, some of those certificates are quite rare. However, don't be too sure that you will get your money back out in any reasonable amount of time. Now may be the time for bargain-hunting, but it is most assuredly a time for caution.

Check out BullMarketGifts.com

2008-10-24T18:44:00.003-06:00

I thought I would let all of you know of a site for vintage and one-of-a-kind Wall Street memorabilia, objects d'art, and collectibles - BullMarketGifts.com. You will find bull and bear theme office, wall and desk accessories as well as a good selection of Wall Street-related art work and collectibles. There is also a selection of framed certificates involving some of the big-name brokerages and companies as well as a selection of collectible Wall Street books. Check out BullMarketGifts.com.

Spink Smythe Autumn Stock & Bond Sale

2008-10-21T07:28:00.007-06:00

Spink Smythe's latest sale catalog #289 (mislabeled #288 in tiny numbers on the spine) arrived yesterday. This catalog presents a departure from previous stock and bond sales in that it is now in FULL color. I know that increases production costs, but I think the effort will be most welcomed by collectors around the globe.

The Autumn Stock & Bond Sale will take place at the company's New York offices at 10:00 am, November 7, 2008. The sale features 617 lots with 161 lots involving North American railroads. The buyer's premium is 20% of the hammer price per lot on the first $2000, and 15% thereafter.

Unlike European competitors, Spink Smythe's sales have always offered fair minimum bids. I cannot overstate the importance of this approach for the hobby. By setting reasonable minimum bids, collectors can "feel" the direction of prices, and therefore the direction of the hobby. Astute bidders can get a feeling for how to bid in future auctions and recognize fair versus unfair buying opportunities in fixed price settings.

Reasonable opening prices allow sales of items to develop "momentum" on their way to ultimate sales prices. This is especially important in down markets. Professional auctioneers always seek price momentum. When collectibles have price momentum, they usually achieve higher prices. One of the tricks is to start sales at fair opening bids and thereby allow bidders to generate emotion and enthusiasm, otherwise known as "auction fever." High opening minimums always stifle "auction fever."

I really don't know what kinds of prices we'll see in today's freaked out financial climate. I doubt we'll see any record breaking. However, I can testify that there are some great and rarely-seen certificates in this sale. In situations such as today, moneyed buyers can really clean up. I am NOT predicting, but ... I will not be terribly surprised to see a medium to high percentage of lots sold. (European auctions with high minimum starting bids always have low percentages of lots sold.)

Because of the turbulent financial news, last week's Las Vegas automobile auction was unenthusiastic and disappointing for sellers. However, those advanced collectors with money made some absolutely great buys! Those were the few people that recognize that buying collectibles in times like these can pay off very handsomely indeed.

I think this Spink Smythe sale represents a similar buying opportunity for stock and bond collectors with vision. The pros know that the best time to buy is when everyone else is running scared.

Be sure to contact Spink Smythe immediately for this handsome catalog. Thankfully, the catalog is already online and available for viewing. 147 of the 161 railroad-related lots are illustrated online.

HWPH Auction 11

2008-10-15T07:25:00.003-06:00

I just received the latest offering from Matthias Schmitt's company HWPH Historisches Wertpapierhaus. Auction 11 will be held at Schloss Montabaur (Castle of Montabaur) in Montabaur, Germany November 8 and 9, 2008.

As usual, the huge HWPH catalog is a full-color work of art. Essentially all of the 2207 lots are illustrated in color with over 100 lots from U.S. and North American companies. In addition to the catalog, you may examine all lots online. From the home page, click on the "auktionen" link at the left to see the entire catalog.

Herr Schmitt has been a long-time contributor to my project and I always look forward to his offerings. HWPH charges the typical 15% commission rate plus the unavoidable European value added tax (on the commission only). Counting commission and VAT, plan on paying 19.85% on top of your bid amount. Fortunately, the U.S. dollar has risen substantially relative to the Euro in the last couple months, so the penalty to American buyers is decreasing. HWPH takes PayPal, so international payment is now extremely easy. (Feel free to communicate with HWPH in English with any questions you may have.)

Please contact the HWPH Historisches Wertpapierhau AG for a catalog or bidding instructions.

H.J.W. Daugherty, Auction 150

2008-10-15T07:08:00.003-06:00

The lastest offering from Duagherty came only yesterday and the auction will be held Sunday. You will need to move quickly if you want to get any bids in on the 13 lots of railroad stocks and bonds.

Daugherty has been a regular philatelic auctioneer (stamps) for a long, long time. This particular auction will be held at the Walpex Show in Lexington, MA, October 19, 2008. Duagherty always accepts mail and fax bids, so this means you will need to order a catalog quickly.

Daugherty has resisted the steady climb in auction commissions and still charges only 10%.

While the vast proportion of Duagherty's auctions are, of course, stamp-related, he ALWAYS offers a few railroad stock and bond lots. And because most of his bidders are more interested in stamps, it is fairly easy to win lots.

Daugherty has a listing of the catalog online at hjwdonline. You may also get in line for future catalogs from his web site.

Clinton Hollins catalogs received

2008-10-06T15:48:00.004-06:00

For those not already familiar, Clinton Hollins is a long-time dealer in stocks and bonds. Clinton is a no-frills kind of guy who simply goes about his business selling certificates. Clinton has a huge web site that shows much of his vast inventory. Some of us have privately wondered where he gets all his certificates, month in month out.

Because Clinton goes about his business so quietly, it is easy for newcomers to under-estimate both the depth of his inventory and the frugality of his prices. When I frequently mention that "some dealers routinely offer certificates at prices below eBay," this is the guy I'm talking about.

Several times a year, Clinton sends out no-frills, unillustrated price lists. Each one is around 36 pages. He usually prices most items as single and multiples, depending on how many he has in stock.

If you don't already receive Clinton's lists, contact him and be sure to tell him what your specialty might be. The easiest way to contact him is at:

Clinton Hollins
PO Box 2711
Springfield, VA 22152-2711

October 11 Scott Winslow Auction

2008-09-29T07:54:00.005-06:00

The latest offerings from Scott J. Winslow Associates Inc will take place October 11. This is a mail, phone and live internet auction, meaning you can bid live via eBay. As always, in cases of tie bids, the earliest bid received takes precedence, so I always recommend bidding as early as you can.

This sale is 100% focused on stocks and bonds. The offering includes 847 lots, with 337 representing railroad companies. As usual, Scott will offer gobs of heavy-hitter autographs, with more than 80 lots involving railroad certificates. Among the autographed items are Gould, Harriman, Commodore Vanderbilt and several lots involving J.P. Morgan.

Winslow remains one of the few auction houses which has not hiked his commission structure. Winslow's rate is still 15% of the hammer price. Because of eBay fees, successful online bidders will pay an additional 5%. This should give you additional incentive to bid early.

I also applaud Scott for clearly stating his minimum acceptable bid - "60% of the low estimate." I really don't understand why many other houses find this concept so hard to understand.

I don't have time for a full count, but it looks like 85% to 90% of the lots are illustrated. Be warned that illustrations are in black and white in the catalog, which is one of the ways to control costs in order to keep commission fees affordable.

Contact Scott J. Winslow Associates immediately to receive a copy of the 102 page catalog. You may also see an Acrobat version of the catalog on the web site. Obviously, color images will appear for the online sale. (You must be registered in advance to participate in the live eBay action.)

Mario Boone's "Super Attic Sale", auction 41

2008-09-24T07:18:00.006-06:00

I just received the catalog for Mario Boone's sale #41. Boone has been promoting this sale for a couple months and it will finally take place in Antwerp on October 18 and 19. This sale is unusual in that every lot will offer at least a 100 certificates.

True to its name, this is a "Super Attic Sale" that attempts to liquidate over a million stocks and bonds in one sale.

Typical of every Boone sale, certificates from the whole planet are represented. The vast majority of the 846 lots are illustrated. All are shown in color.

Over 12 percent of the entire sale are United States companies and over two-thirds of those are railroad certificates. A quick count shows that the 73 lots of U.S. railroad certificates total 28,598 certificates. Therefore, each lot contains an average of 392 certificates. Lot will generally contain one or two types.

I have already been asked whether this sale will depress prices. In my opinion, such a huge hoard dumped on the market in one sale must surely lower prices. However, I would not want to overstate the case.

First, there are no real surprises in the sale. Most lots contain certificates that are already priced very low in the U.S. For instance, there are 2,890 certificates from the B&O and 1,453 from the Little Miami. The West Shore is represented by 843 certificates which is a drop in the bucket compared to what is out there.

As expected, a vast number of certificates are being recycled from the New York Central hoard. Those very same certificates have been selling in vast numbers for 20 years. I doubt that U.S. prices for many of those certificates will change much at all.

Having said that, I will suggest that we will see the greatest downward effect on prices in Europe. From my perspective, European prices for overly common U.S. certificates have been absurdly high, held high for little reason other than the language barrier. (Not to mention that many beginner sellers refuse to ship to Europe!) As soon as we see certificates from Boone's hoard appear on eBay Germany, prices should get a little more realistic.

The price depression I anticipate will depend, of course, on how disciplined Boone's buyers will be when it comes time to recover their investments. If those purchasers dribble their new inventory out slowly, we won't see a tremendous price decrease. If they dump them out onto eBay every week, prices of selected item will decrease.

Personally, I'm voting for reasonableness. Witness prices for $1000 registered bonds from the West Shore Railroad. They have great eye appeal and prices remain in the $2 to $5 range, even though there are tens of thousands of them out there. What effect will another 381 (in lot #809) have on prices? Probably very little.

Request your catalog from Mario Boone and read more about the sale online.

Spink London Sale Catalog 8027 Out

2008-08-25T07:31:00.003-06:00

Spink's latest Bond and Share Certificates of the World catalog (sale #8027) is out should be in the hands of most established bidders by now.

The sale offers 703 lots. 95 lots represent United States collectibles with 24 lots being related to railways. Because of the current weakened state of the dollar, collectors may find it a little hard to get excited about bidding in pound-denominated sales. However, the pain will be greatly lessened if you are willing to bid on multi-item lots. I count 10 multi-item railroad lots and I know from experience that they tend to go for very competitive prices.

If you don't already receive this catalog, make sure you contact Spink right away. The sale takes place in London on September 18.

Unlike the Spink Smythe catalog reviewed a few days ago, this Spink catalog one has many full-color images of individual certificates. I did not count, but it looks like about 15% of all lots are illustrated by full-color individual images. Remaining lots of individual items are fully illustrated online. This format (all lots illustrated online and a good selection illustrated in color in catalogs) is the standard format for European auctions. Because of low U.S. prices, I am not sure sales can fully justify color printing for American sales. However, I fail to see any good reason for not showing all auction lots online, including multi-item lots.

New Spink Smythe stock and bond catalog out

2008-08-21T12:59:00.006-06:00

Today I received the newest Spink Smythe Bond, Share & Americana Auction. This sale closes on September 9, 2008, so if you want to get a copy of the 116-page catalog, contact Spink Smythe soon.

I counted approximately 579 lots directly related to stocks and bonds. There are another 30 lots of books, newspapers, pamphlets, and peripheral items related to the hobby in greater or lesser degrees.

Of this number, 163 lots are related to railroading. Over half of the rail-related listings are multi-item lots.

As some of you have complained, the paucity of images remains disappointing. Whereas catalogs for Spink's London sales are well-illustrated with photos of many individual certificates, this New York sale catalog has stayed with the practice of illustrating stocks and bonds with overlapping images. While not trying to defend the practice, this might reflect market reality. The cold, hard truth is that prices for collectible stocks and bonds are currently at ten-year (and in many cases 20-year!) lows. Individual illustrations may not be cost-effective. Still, even resorting to partial, overlapped images, there are only 99 photos of certificates.

Hopefully, full images of all lots will be shown when the online catalog becomes available. (The sale is not yet online as of this date.)

8th Northern Virginia Stock and Bond Show

2008-08-15T10:25:00.004-06:00

The 8th annual Northern Virginia Stock and Bond Show will be Jan. 30 and 31, 2009 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near Dulles Airport.

I am announcing this show early in case you want to reserve a table for selling certificates.

If you contact show promoter Bob Schell before September 25, you can save 9% to 16% off table rentals, depending on whether you reserve one, two or three tables.

As usual, Bob has negotiated special room rates at Crowne Plaze and there are free shuttles from Dulles.

Contact Bob as soon as possible at:

Bob Schell

P.O. Box 222

St. Germain, WI 54558

rsschell@msn.com

Passing of Ken Holter

2008-08-06T08:10:00.004-06:00

Ken's nephew contacted me last week to tell me the sad news that Kenneth Holter had recently passed away in St. Paul. Minnesota. Details are sketchy at this time, but I knew Ken had been hospitalized a couple times in the last two years. He was a very private individual, so I knew little of any conditions he may have endured.

Some of you probably knew Ken through his online sales of railroad stocks and bonds at Scripophily Corner. I am positive that all of my newsletter readers recognize his name as a L-O-N-G-time contributor. After the first edition of my catalog appeared in 1995, Ken immediately became one of my heaviest contributors.

Except when on vacation, Ken contributed certificate images every single day. I just did a quick search and found he had reported over 10,500 pieces of information to the database, primarily serial numbers and images. I imagine he contributed another 1,000 pieces of information before I developed capabilities for recording information sources.

In the last couple of years, Ken contributed many new company names by searching through all sorts of railroad passes, books, timetables, brochures and ephemera he found listed on eBay and elsewhere on the web. Ken was seriously detail-oriented and was always on the lookout for errors in descriptions. Had he not contributed a single bit of other information, his error-checking alone would have proven tremendously valuable.

I will miss Ken's constant presence in my e-mail inbox.

HSK auction planned for August 30

2008-07-30T07:27:00.005-06:00

Michael Weingarten just sent notice that Hanseatisches Sammlerkontor für Historische Wertpapiere (HSK) will holds its 26th auction in Hamburg, Germany on August 30.

As always, certificates from North America are well represented. Of the 1,466 lots offered, 170 lots are from American companies. 92 lots are railroad certificates.

To make it easy on English speakers, all HSK lots are described in both German and English. Every lot is illustrated and available online at http://www.hsk-auction.com/

LaBarre at ANA show

2008-07-26T18:26:00.002-06:00

George LaBarre is going to have two corner spaces at the ANA's World's Fair of Money in Baltimore, July 30 to August 3. George tells me he is going to have a huge selection of paper, including stocks and bonds, paper money, autographs, presidential memorabilia and so forth.

Look for George at adjacent spaces 853 and 952. The ANA convention this year will be at the Baltimore Convention Center, One West Pratt Street. Hours are 10 am to 7 pm.

If you plan to attend, then I strongly suggest you make your appearance on Wednesday or Thursday. Saturdays are always terribly crowded.

More ABN plates offered in latest Stack's sale

2008-07-14T20:13:00.005-06:00

Stack's will offer the next batch of 148 American Bank Note Company plates in its upcoming Samuel J. Bernhard sale at ANA's World's Fair of Paper Money in Baltimore. The sale will take place July 27 and 28.

The plates will appear in lots 4001 through 4147. This time, the vast majority of plates are related to paper money with only two plates directly related to railroad certificates.

Lot 4027 (starting price $60) is a cylindrical die of the main vignette and masthead portion of many popular certificates of the Chicago Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co. This die shows the company name and the vignette of a 4-4-0 locomotive facing l-r.

Lot 4038 (starting price $120) is a plate of a full stock certificate of the Morris & Essex Rail Road Co (MOR-735a-S-50). Of all the plates offered in all the sales so far, only a handful have represented full certificates. This is a very rare opportunity to acquire a full metal printing plate of a railroad stock certificate.

You may view and bid on all the lots online at Stack's web site. Contact Stack's at 800-566-2580 for a copy of the beautiful full color catalog.

Before bidding, I seriously recommend researching past sales prices for plates that have appeared in past sales. (I have a full listing of past Stack's and ANR sales that featured American Bank Note Company plates on my Coxrail site.) Fortunately, all those past sales and prices realized are archived on the Stack's site.

New German glossary on my web site

2008-07-06T11:58:00.007-06:00

Translation software is constantly getting better, but it is still a long way from perfection. This is especially true if you want to translate descriptions of U.S. certificates you find in German auctions.

I like the translations I get using Google Translate. There seems to be a moderately good sensitivity to context. In other words, it translates by considering surrounding words, instead of merely offering dictionary definitions.

I recently compiled a glossary of German words I most frequently see in certificate descriptions. I also added hints for improving your translation results. (German compound words often befuddle the best translation software.)

Why am I telling you about German auctions?

Because there are certain U.S. certificates that ONLY appear in German auctions.

You need to know that if you bid, you will compete with European collectors who typically bid more freely for rarities than Americans. And if you win, you WILL pay very serious premiums because the dollar has slid so much against the Euro. Nonetheless, the major German language houses speak excellent English and will help you bid if, like me, you do not speak German.

Interview with Ephemera

2008-07-06T10:45:00.003-06:00

You may read my recent interview with Marty Weil who has a huge Ephemera blog. He offers excellent coverage of a wide range of subjects. For those of you who collect other kinds of paper, Ephemera is a great place to start.

Gene Hessler wins prestigious Farran Zerbe Memorial Award for Distinguished Service

2008-07-03T16:34:00.002-06:00

The latest issue (July 2008) of the Numismatist has a great article about Gene Hessler and his winning the American Numismatic Association's highest honor. The honor is especially hightened by the fact that the recipient has worked tirelessly promoting paper money collecting in a hobby dominated almost entirely by collectors of metal coins.

From my earliest days collecting currency, Hessler has been THE towering force in the paper hobby. His works include:

U.S. Essay, Proof and Specimen Notes
An Illustrated History of U.S. Loans
Comprehensive Catalog of U.S. Paper Money
The Engraver's Line
The International Engraver's Line
Buy and Sell Guide to U.S. Coins
Buy and Sell Guide to U.S. Paper Money
Collecting Large Size U.S. Paper Money
Collecting U.S. Obsolete Currency

In addition, Hessler's articles have appeared constantly in numismatic periodicals including Paper Money, Bank Note Reporter and the Numismatist.

His stack of awards keeps growing and you have to wonder how he possibly finds time for anything else. Never mind that he is a superb musician who's worked with the likes of Woody Herman and Buddy Rich and played in the orchestra pits of Broadway! He has yet another book coming out, a memoir of his music career titled, Hey Mr. Horn Blower."

I mean really! Does this guy sleep???

The announcement of the award appears in a nicely-done article in the Numismatist by Fred Schwan. (Fred is the guy who took the chance and published the first edition of my catalog.) You may read the article in its entirety online at http://thenumismatist.idigitaledition.com/. The article starts on page 50. Pay special attention to the 1974 picture of Hessler and NBC's critic Gene Shalit on page 53. If that picture doesn't convince you that Gene Hessler is a musician, I don't know what it will take.

Please note that Hessler's book, The Engraver's Line, is focused fully on the engravers and companies of the security printing industry that created paper money, stamps and stocks and bonds. If you don't already have the book, you really owe it to yourself to put a copy on your bookshelf. You can buy the book from Amazon, numismatic book dealers, and from me at Papermental.com.

I hope that every one of you will join me in extending congratulations, good will and appreciation to Gene Hessler, a true giant of the hobby. All you have to do is add a comment below and I will make sure that Gene gets the message.

New Spink Smythe sale catalog available

2008-06-27T17:15:00.012-06:00

I just received Spink Smythe's newest sale catalog, The Frederick Forbes Angus Collection including other fine numismatic properties. This catalog is primarily an offering for paper money. However, there are around 230 lots of corporate stocks and bonds, both domestic and foreign. Of that number, 28 lots are rail-related.

Even though this is a minimal stock and bond sale, it marks the first under the new rules of management brought by Spink. Some are pluses; some are not.

First, this marks the first where stocks and bonds are represented throughout the sale in full color. Smythe often had a small color section in the front of its catalogs and black and white elsewhere. Full color represents a welcome step up to the model of auction catalogs pioneered by major coin houses and the major European stock and bond dealers. Not all of the certificates are represented with photos, and that simply represents the reality that stocks and bonds are not going to realize big money. Average certificates cannot pay for themselves in a slick catalog.

The second major change is the commission structure. Smythe's previous commission was 15% on all hammer prices. Some of us reasoned that with today's production costs, 15% commissions in U.S. auctions were not going to last much longer. Spink Smythe has moved to a commission of 20% on the first $2000 and 15% on amounts above that. As I have always advised, it does not matter what commission rates are as long as buyers factor them in and bid accordingly.

There are two other changes that I am under-thrilled with.

It seems Spink Smythe abandoned the catalog numbering system that stretched back for 279 sales to the old NASCA days. The company has moved to a verbal system of naming sales catalogs like Christie's and Stack's.

I hope the other change is merely an oversight. I could not find a spot anywhere in the catalog, nor anywhere on the web site, where minimum bids are discussed.

For a copy of this catalog, or for clarification on minimum bids, call 800-622-1880 or email info@spinksmythe.com. The sale will take place July 16 and 17 in New York.

BIG RANT! Inadequate packaging.

2008-06-23T17:19:00.006-06:00

My correspondants and I are really getting tired of inadequate packaging - and not just with eBay sellers. I do not have time to word this with great delicacy and politeness.

Personally, I don't think receiving damaged goods deserves politeness!

Get with the program. If you are selling certificates, then use rigid mailers. NEVER use padded envelopes or bubble envelopes.

Rigid mailers are readily available at the sellers listed below plus many more . They generally sell under the name of "Stay-Flat Mailers", "No-Bend Mailers", or "Rigid Photo Mailers."

Yes, they will cost between 60¢ and $1.50 each, depending on the size. But let me ask you which you would rather do - spend 75¢ on a mailer? Or replace a damaged certificate AND lose future business in the bargain? Besides, you can pass on the cost of the mailer to your buyer.

Here is a quick rundown on suppliers, with links to their web sites:

Uline - look for "Stay Flat Mailers"
Calumet Carton - look for "Stay Flat Mailers"
Packaging Supplies Co - look for "Stay Flat Mailers"
ShippingSupply.com - look for "No-Bend Mailers"
Associated Bag Co. - look for "No-Bend Mailers"
Argrov Box - look for "Stay Flat Mailers"
Amazon.com - look for "Rigid Photo Mailers"

June newsletter available

2008-06-20T21:26:00.006-06:00

The June newsletter is ready for download.

In this issue, I continue the discussion about the relationship of rarity and price. The point I want make is that "desire" has a direct effect on price. Rarity is affects desire, but it is only one of many variables. Rarity, therefore, has an indirect effect on price.

My main article this time discusses where to find "new" certificates. With prices so very low, both here and in Europe, now is an excellent time to discover and acquire "new" certificates at terrific prices. Low prices will NOT last forever.

Working on another newsletter

2008-06-17T09:32:00.002-06:00

I will probably have the June newspetter ready by the end of the week. If you are not already on my subscription list, let me know if you want to be notified when it ready for downloading from my newsletters page.

In the June issue, I will continue talking about the effect of rarity on prices as well as where you can go to find "new" certificates.

Why another newsletter so soon after sending one at the end of April? I just felt like it.

ABN Plates in Stack's Auctions

2008-06-10T13:00:00.005-06:00

Although the catalog will not be available for a few weeks, there are more ABN plates are slated to appear in Stack's sale planned for July 27-28.

The sale of plates from the American Bank Note Company archives began under American Numismatic Rarities and then continued under Stack's. All the sales have contained a good selection of plates on a wide variety of subjects. There is a little bit of everything there to satisfy just about any collecting interest.

So far, prices for these historic artifacts have proven very strong. If you're interested in acquiring any of these, make sure you do your homework. Don't go in with a lowball bid and expect to win anything.

To date, plates have appeared in two ANR sales and five Stacks sales. You can research prices by looking through Stack's auction archives. Each sale offered about 150-160 plates. Full color images and prices realized are still available online for all lots sold. See my special page on sales of the American Bank Note Company archives for a complete list of all Stack's and ANR auctions that contained plates.

New SpinkSmythe Auction Catalog Online

2008-06-05T22:26:00.008-06:00

I just checked back with SpinkSmythe and found its upcoming June 18 autograph auction (#280) now online.

As expected there are a few autographs related to stocks, bonds, and railroads. They include signatures from Jay Gould (lots 120 and 121), Collis Huntington (lot 144), Mahone (lot 168), and J.P. Morgan (lots 177 and 178). One of the sleepers, from my point here in Colorado, is the Henry Teller autographed certificate (lot 240).

Teller was a heavy-duty lawyer who moved to Central City when gold was flowing out of the mountains like water. A fair amount of it stuck in his trousers and he somehow managed to build a fortune, an opera house, and a Senate seat. In return, the grateful citizens of this fair state pinned his name to a large county.

In trying to discover his autograph, you may find that Spink's web page mavens have been working overly long hours somewhere on the planet adding new goo-gahs, paint and varnish to the house of Smythe.

If you get to the page pertinent to Autograph Auction 280, you may encounter a minor road bump when the page tells you that you need to accept "cookies." Here's the simple fix...

Depending on which browser you use, simply go to the top menubar and find the part that deals with privacy. Typically, click something like Tools > Options > Privacy. Merely set your privacy settings to "low", refresh the SpinkSmythe web page, and then set your privacy back to where you had it. Once you have Spink's "cookie" on your system, you can browse all auctions.

New LaBarre Catalog Available

2008-06-03T07:29:00.004-06:00

I just received George LaBarre's newest catalog, Wholesale & Rarities Sale 8. As always, George's catalogs are dramatic, full-color works of art printed on high quality paper. This latest one is 82 pages, with 62 pages dedicated to stocks and bonds. Contact George H. LaBarre Galleries, Inc. Email: collect@glabarre.com. 800-717-9529.

New Hollins List Available

2008-06-02T15:23:00.002-06:00

Clinton Hollins' latest list just arrived here in Colorado today. For those of you not already on Clinton's list, his unillustrated lists contains hundreds of certificates and come out very frequently. You can view lots online at http://www.clintonhollins.com/. If you are an active buyer on eBay, then you owe it to yourself to check out Clinton's prices.

Upcoming Books

2008-05-30T22:23:00.011-06:00

Long-time certificate dealer David Beach recently told me of his upcoming publishing efforts.

Right now, it looks like his book on collectible cigar labels will come first. If you are not aware of these great collectibles, look at his huge collection online at CIGARBOXLABELS.com. (And, if you're visiting Disney World down in Orlando, be sure to visit.)

Yes, if you're wondering, there are quite a few rail-related labels, including artwork with celebrities such as Commodore Vanderbilt and Henry Clews.

David tells me he is under pressure to finish Cigar Label Advertising Art, so stay tuned. I'll give more details on price and availability as his schedule becomes better defined.

Also in the works after the cigar label book is Antique Stock and Bond Certificates. Our hobby desparately needs more references on the subject, so let's give David Beach as much support as possible.

Spink Smythe Autograph Sale

2008-05-30T08:48:00.005-06:00

Spink Smythe (previously R.M. Smythe) will hold an autograph auction of "World Leaders and Heads of State." The sale will take place at its 57th St. gallery in New York on June 18.

Lots are not yet posted online and I have not seen a catalog, However, if this sale is like previous ones, it ought to offer at least a few rail-related autographs. Call 212-943-1880 to order a sale catalog.

Please note their new web address at http://www.spinksmythe.com/.

Also note that some email addresses have changed. It might be a good time to re-connect with your old contacts to make confirm their addresses.

ABN sale part III in a week

2008-05-27T20:58:00.003-06:00

Archives International and H.R. Harmer will conduct their third sale of specimens and proofs from the great archives of the American Bank Note Company in less than a week.

Bob Schwartz just sent a press release saying that IF you have not yet received your catalog, it is not too lates. You can get this 465-page monster catalog by 2-day express mail for $50, or by overnight express for $75.

Contact Robert Schwartz at ROBERT@ABNHARMERAUCTIONS.COM.