Railroad Stocks

Thank you! I would venture that 95 percent of my certificates come from eBay -- but the ones I like don't pop up too often.

Here are a couple nice trolley stocks. I especially like the tall ship vignette on the Philly stock -- it's being guided in by a steam tug.

Made some great finds at a big coin show recently. You never know when a stock/bond dealer might show up.

I love the engraving on this little 1870's Boston, Hartford & Erie Railroad Stock Coupon:

That's a pretty one! Nice micro engraving.

Normally, I advise collectors to steer clear of individual bond coupons, unless the bond is quite rare (like early U.S. Treasury bonds). The reason is this -- bonds often came with one or more pages of 30 to 40 coupons, which would be clipped off by the company at six-month intervals as interest was paid. Many bond were sold or cancelled before all the coupons were used -- and few modern day dealers have taken to clipping these off themselves and selling them for a buck or two. With 60 or more coupons you can see why they might be tempted. Then they sell the coupon bonds, minus the coupons, which is cheating, imho. In the larger scripophily market there's little demand for these; most are bought as curiosities by collectors who don't really know what they are.

For those interested, I recently started another railroad stock/bond thread on the sister site of Coin Community Family: https://www.coincommunity.com/forum...IC_ID=302636

The coupons are a nice way of satisfying the intaglio-addicted...

Here's an example of my collecting interests: 1. a check with an example of manufacturing/industry and 2. a train
===============================

History link for your reading pleasure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littl...ami_Railroad

Here's a very early version of a Little Miami Railroad stock certificate, from the 1850s. That's Henry Clay in the lower left; I'm not quite sure about the dour portrait in the upper left. I think it's either John Brown or John C. Calhoun. Any guesses?

=== did you notice the TWO trains ?? ===

The engraving on your Western Railway of Alabama stock certificate is similar to one used on several of the Railroad Propaganda covers in California in the late 1850s. The image below is from a Siegel auction catalog.