Telling Collectors About Your Sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.