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Ohio Valley Collect
Dealers In Collectable Stocks, Bonds, and US Currency
Own A Piece Of  Financial History

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Once you have a piece of Scripophily you can then decide how you would like to enjoy your certificate.  Scripophily certificates are frequently put into a picture frame and hung on a wall.  These are nice decorations for the home or office and are great conversation starters.  We recently mounted over 100 certificates for an interior decorator who was using old stocks as a theme for a restaurant.  For best results you should frame certificates that have not been folded.

You may find that your certificates are enjoyable and would like to accumulate a collection and would rather create a book to hold your Scripophily collection.  Books are a good approach because you can leaf through your collection as it grows.  Loose leaf binders may be used with plastic sleeves that hold each document and protects them from wear.  Some collectors have several books, one for mining, one for bank shares, and one for railroads.  Your local office supply store should have a binder and plastic pages to protect your certificates.

Other collectors buy acid free folders to store their collection and keep them in fire proof safes.  We have one collector with a very large collection that stores his certificates loose in drawers.  The choice is yours, you should protect your old certificates the best you can.

You will find that these old stock certificates were printed on various sizes of paper.  Some are small and some can be fairly large.  If you are collecting and storing your certificates in books then you may want to check the document sizes as some of the larger paper is difficult to fit into a book.  It should also be noted that older paper that make up a Scripophily collection is fragile.  Many times a document will be over 100 years old and needs to be handled gently.  With frequent handling of an unprotected document you can expect that edges of the paper will split or deteriorate.

Corporate bonds are generally larger than stock certificates.  Some bonds have multiple pages, coupon bonds for example, and most bonds have been folded making them less suitable for framing.  Some of the tall format bonds were engraved so that you had nice printing on each side after the document was folded.  Many collectors store their bonds folded and kept in drawers.  Bonds are different than stocks in that the corporations terms and conditions pertaining to paying interest is printed right on the bond, these can be enjoyable reading for those who like to research corporate finance.

Collectors usually focus on an industry of interest when they begin a collection.  Railroad collections are quite popular when starting a Scripophily collection.  Some collectors pick a specific railroad and try to get an example of each variation of a corporations stock certificates.  A railroad as an example may have issued new stock share certificates every five years, each issue with a different printing, different officers signatures, different terms and conditions, and so on.  This type of collecting is called building a type set.

Feel free to contact us if you need further advice on starting a Scripophily collection.