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Physical stock and bond certificates, once common proof of ownership, can become valuable collectibles or hold hidden financial worth even if the issuing company has changed names or merged. If you possess an old certificate, understanding how to research its current status and value is crucial. This guide will walk you through the process of determining if your certificates have financial or collectible value, what to do if they are lost or stolen, and how to protect these important documents.

Do Your Old Stock or Bond Certificates Still Hold Value?

An old bond or stock certificate might still be valuable, even if it no longer trades under the name written on the certificate. The original company may have merged with another entity, been acquired, or simply changed its corporate name. You can use various resources to determine if your old stock or bond certificate has financial value. Even if a certificate has no monetary worth as an active security, the certificate itself might have value as a collectible item.

Resources for researching certificate value can be found at stock exchanges, online, in public libraries, or at stockbroker offices. Please note that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not endorse or recommend any specific entities, their personnel, products, or services mentioned below.

Resources for Researching Certificate Value

A physical stock certificate serves as tangible proof of ownership of shares in a company. While most modern stock transactions are electronic, understanding the value of older physical certificates often requires specialized research. Here are some key resources:

Financial Stock Guide of Services

Published by Financial Information, Inc. since 1928, this comprehensive guide is an excellent starting point for researching old stock certificates. This annually updated index includes a list of actively traded stocks and obsolete securities. Financial Information Inc. also offers a Custom Research department that can investigate your certificate for a fee.

Robert D. Fisher Manual of Valuable & Worthless Securities

Published by R.M. Smythe & Co., Inc., this multi-volume source is particularly helpful if you are looking to trace the value of very old stock certificates. R.M. Smythe & Co. offers a service to research your certificate for a charge.

Moody's OTC Industrial Manual and Moody's Industrial Manual

Published by Mergent Company, these guides provide brief summaries of companies' backgrounds, histories, principal plants, subsidiaries, acquisitions, mergers, and properties. These guidelines are updated annually and can often be accessed through subscriptions or online databases.

National Stock Summary

Published monthly by the Pink Sheets LLC, this publication reviews over-the-counter information and offerings for unlisted stocks. It includes current prices for such securities, as published in daily national quotation services or leading financial periodicals. The Pink Sheets can also investigate your bond certificate for a fee.

What to Do If Your Stock Certificates Are Lost or Stolen?

Banks, brokerage firms, corporations, and transfer agents have procedures in place to help investors replace lost or stolen certificates. If your securities certificate is stolen, accidentally destroyed, or lost, you should immediately contact the transfer agent for that security. Request that a "stop transfer" be placed on the lost securities. Your broker may also be able to assist you with this process.

A stop transfer helps prevent someone from transferring ownership of the securities from your name to another's. The transfer agent or broker-dealer will also report details about the missing certificates to the SEC's stolen and lost securities program.

If you are expecting a bond certificate via mail and it does not arrive, you should immediately contact the organization that issued the certificate, typically your brokerage firm. While some companies use certified or registered mail to deliver securities certificates, others prefer standard mail to avoid drawing attention to the item's potential value.

How to Replace Lost or Stolen Stock Certificates

You can typically obtain a new certificate to replace a missing one. However, before issuing a new certificate, corporations generally require the following:

• The owner must provide a sworn affidavit detailing all the circumstances surrounding the loss.
• The owner must purchase a security bond to protect the corporation and the transfer agent against the possibility that the lost certificate might later be presented by an innocent buyer. This bond typically costs between one and two percent of the certificate's current market value.
• The owner must request a new certificate before an innocent buyer obtains the original.

If you later find your missing bond certificate, you should inform whomever you contacted to place the stop transfer so that the stolen or lost securities information can be removed. Otherwise, you may encounter difficulties selling the securities.

Protecting Your Physical Stock Certificates

We recommend keeping a copy of both sides of your certificates in a separate location from the physical bond certificates themselves. If a bond certificate is stolen or lost and then transferred on the transfer agent's books to another buyer, it may be impossible for you to establish that you owned it because the transfer agent may no longer have a record of your name. However, if you have a record of the certificate numbers, the transfer agent should be able to reconstruct when it was transferred and to whom.

Securities certificates are valuable documents and should be protected. To avoid the responsibility and burden of protecting physical certificates, many investors today choose to have their brokerage firm or another company hold their securities electronically or in "street name" (where the brokerage firm is the registered owner, but you are the beneficial owner).