Hi. I've got those old stocks from 1904 for the Arizona southern mining company, and Papago land and water co...

Thank you so much, this gives me somewhere to look at least. Crossing my fingers that I'll end up lucky...I really need it. Problem is I'm on the other side of the country, but I might be making my way down to California soon anyway. Thank you so much user!

OP you may have literally hit a gold mine. Think of the price of gold alone.

onlygold.com/Info/Historical-Gold-Prices.asp

Get in touch with AZ Sec of State as someone mentioned and talk to them. This probably is not the first time this has happened, though it's certainly not common.

Keep us updated. What was the story of how you found these? Or did your grandfather just give them to you?

My grandfather died way back in 2004 and these were found in his safe, along with other weird stuff. I remember seeing these when I was a little kid and wondering what they were. I just came back home from studying in Scotland, and was cleaning up my moms house for her. I found them sitting in a box of rubbish and decided what the hell, time to see if these are worth anything. I will be back with more info if I find anything. Going to keep a few of these hidden for myself just in case. Thank you for the help guys!

I'd also like to point out that there does not seem to be any of these selling as collectables on ebay, and there are tons of these old stock shares selling on there. This might be a good sign

>mining stocks

this is why you're a poorfag now

I was already a poorfag without the mining stocks :)

OP is a millionaire and he doesn't even know it yet.

Save yourself the trouble and auction it. You'll make atleast make a couple of hundred bucks at the very minimum.

How many times do you think this happens? I imagine it must happen a great deal, where people just fucking forget what they have coming to them.

Ill give you $100 for them right now OP

5000 each

>it's very likely that the company was purchased and you're entitled to some stock in a current company
C'mon man. When you don't know the answer to a question, give no advice instead of bad advice.

The deadline to surrender the certificates will have long passed, and any dividends or distributions will have escheated to the state long ago. The certificates are worthless in that respect.

They have some value as collectors items, and that's it.

>Acquired by some multinational, bigger stock swap
>- All dividends, if any, are either pending payment to you or were used to buy you more shares
>- You've literally had over 100 years of gains/losses
>- $$$
Jesus, just stop. This isn't a Hollywood movie script. The real world doesn't work that way.

Please don't feed the OP false hope.

The nature of mining companies is they tend to go bust once the land they purchased/leased has been mined for all it's worth, or yields so little PMs the company goes bankrupt.

I did some poking around but I cannot find any references to the companies, so I suspect this may have happened to them.

The certificates do, however, hold value as a collectors item. I did stumble across the following site which should give you an idea of what the certificates might be worth:

oldwesthistorystore.com/

Best of luck OP.

You do remember that there are IDs on here, right?

Regardless, you aren't wrong, but are assuming a lot about laws regarding 1904 corporations. There's a reason I characterize it as an extreme possibility, not a likely one.

To be honest, this is the most likely correct answer:

Why do you think this? I mean I hope you're right, but it would be fucking crazy. I'd do some good things with that money if I got it.

I'd rather do the research first. I'm not gonna get jewed, and who knows? Maybe you just want me to sell them to you cheap ;)

Per share? I hope so lol.

It doesn't say anything about a deadline on the certificates...do you mean the deadline if the company went under? I dunno, that user seemed to know what he was talking about, and he said thats IF I'm really lucky.

Tell you what, if any of you niggers find more info and if they are worth millions, I'll give you a lil' cut. But, I highly doubt it will happen.

Thank you for the link.
Whether I make a few bucks or I get lucky, you guys have helped out a noob a lot and I appreciate it. I am going to do my research but not get my hopes up.

Not your personnel army, kid

What about Papago Land and Water co? There are about 500 shares of that too. Apparently they supplied all of California with water, or so I've heard.

Likely met the same fate:
cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19040322.2.190.6

Corporations were a different animal back then. Prior to the late 1800s, corporations requires an act of legislation to form, and were typically only given corporation status to complete a specific objective (e.g. to build a railroad) and were forced to wind down afterwards.

When this limitation was relaxed, companies went gangbusters in the late 1800s and early 1900s and formed corporations left and right. Limited oversight and the stock market crash of 1929 wiped a lot of these corporations off the face of the planet.

Again, I would say these have value to a collector, but I seriously doubt that they would hold any other value.

That all makes a lot of sense, really. If they aren't worth anything, at least they can be sold as collectables. Still going to make some calls, because I do not want to end up kicking myself if they were worth a lot.Thanks for not letting me get my hopes up too much.

How old was your grandpa when he died?
If he was still alive in 2004 I think it's unlikely he would own stock in companies that went bankrupt in 1929.

Wherever Papa goes...

He was born in 1909, so he was 95 when he died.
Yea, one would think they would probably still have value if he was keeping them in his safe up until 2004. It seems some of the stock shares were issued to someone else, a "J.C. Clark". No idea who that might be. My family isn't exactly poor...well I am and so is my immediate family, but my aunt is a millionaire. My grandparents weren't poor, either.

>You do remember that there are IDs on here, right?
You do remember that tripfags are universally despised unless they have unique skills, experience or qualifications relevant to the board, right?

There's no such thing as the "laws of 1904 corporations." When corporate law is revised, it applies to all corporations, regardless of when they formed. Furthermore, the legal principle of escheatment dates back to Norman England, so I'm pretty confident that it applies here.

So, in short, your answer was bullshit, and your attempts to backtrack are pathetic.

>I dunno, that user seemed to know what he was talking about, and he said thats IF I'm really lucky.
user is a moron, and you believed him because he gave you the answer that you wanted to hear. I gave you the correct answer, but its not as optimistic for your pocket book.

There are NUMEROUS legal principles that would prevent you from ever realizing any intrinsic value that these share might have once had. First, if the company was purchased or merged, there would have been a deadline for surrender of the certificates. Second, the statute of limitations for bringing any suit to collect any intrinsic value these share might have had has passed decades ago. Third, you'd be prevented from collecting anything under equitable principles, such as laches, because too much time has passed. Fourth, any value that might have flowed from these shares long ago escheated to the state, and you no longer have any property interest in them.

As I explained before, they're just pretty pieces of paper now.

Donate them to some arizona historic society or try to pawn them off on ebay for 30 bucks a piece

This guys rght. Its paper now

You're correct, but we're talking past each other, and it's partially my fault for being vague. You are correct that the company would be amenable to whatever corporate law in Arizona applied. Better-stated on my part: the fact that the OP holds share certs has no bearing on whether or not he's legally entitled to anything, and it's at least very barely possible that he may.

It's not impossible that, for example, his grandfather was involved enough with his ownership of the stock that - if there was a stock swap - he was involved and just kept the certificates as a nicety. Hell, that's what happened in my family - bank shares from the late 1800s, we still have the certificates with the original corporate name on it, that corporation ended up getting folded into BB&T down the road and worth a shit ton of money, but it took some effort to trace the stuff back. We still had legal title to whatever those shares ended up being, but it obviously wasn't because of the certificates, although they did pique our knowledge of the existence of the stock (and the ultimate BB&T shares, which we did own but had to prove that fact). This is precisely why I made the sort of grandiose statement I did before, though you're correct it is an outside shot.

Again, you're not incorrect in this post, but you're making a LOT of assumptions, and not thinking as broadly as you should. Critically, you're assuming this stock was acquired, sat on, and his relatives may not have taken action and simply kept the certificates. So far as I can tell from this thread, that isn't obviously the case. Even if we DO assume that the stocks are worthless, which is a decent guess, knowing the trajectory of the company would help them auction them off better and peg them to a better value.

So tl;dr: You aren't wrong, but you're being a bit narrow-minded. Stop bein' angry at the Internet.

Ancestors invested some money into the "Jewish Colonial Trust". Still got the stock and all the dividends attached. Company now is called bank Leumi and is huuuge.

There is even a share redemption application, which I filled out but never heard of them again:

justice.gov.il/Units/ApotroposKlali/Departments/ApotroposKlali/giloi/JCT/Pages/InformationInEnglish.aspx

Anyways, I would not have been eligible to any money, because you have to prove to be the ONLY descendant of your ancestor. Or you have to get together ALL of your relatives and do the paperwork. It isn't that much money in my case. Basically the law, I believe it would be the same in other countries, makes it impossible to cash out.

Hope that was helpful

>Stop bein' angry at the Internet.
I'm not angry at the internet. I'm angry at people like you who play internet lawyer and give poor and misleading advice. At some point it stops being shitposting and crosses the line into malicious and harmful conduct.

>Edge-case optimism about something I have personal experience with
>"Malicious and harmful conduct"

You sure?

>people like you who play internet lawyer
let me guess, Patrick "the starfish" Bateman?

how did I know?

ignore him, he's a well-read 14 year old playing lawyer on the internets. Every board has one.

Assuming average age for the board, these stocks were worthless before your grandfather was born.

he probably inherited them from his grandparents. They're just keepsakes. Proof that someone in your family once had disposable income.

>You sure?
Should we wait until your attention-whoring, ignorant advice actually causes someone to lose money or forfeit valuable rights before calling you out as a massive faggot?

Kid, if you're that into roleplaying, is right over there.

Please explain how he'd lose money or lose rights by investigating the legal history of stock certificates. I'm eager to learn.

he didn't say it would, PB.
he asked (rhetorically) if we should wait until you cause harm b4 calling you out.

not that you're currently causing harm.

your reading comprehension is extremely poor for a lawyer.

Don't try to defend your bad advice by pointing out that it caused no actual harm in this one case.

For all we know, OP (or someone similarly situated) would have wasted time and money chasing down a pipedream on the basis of your poor internet lawyering. Furthermore, why should we tolerate the spread of ignorance and bad advice simply because the harm isn't immediate? In the absence of a swift and immediate correction, you're potentially depriving people of an actual to their questions or solution for their problem.

People like you don't give bad advice just once. Stop playing lawyer on the internet; you're unambiguously ill-trained for the task.

are you the angry bond guy?

Shut up fag.

I hate tripfags but at least he marks himself as a retard in every thread and you can advise other anons not to head his highschool AP class law advice.

Hmm, that's interesting. When did they invest into that? If that is the case for me, I'm actually the last in the bloodline, so I guess i would be entitled. However this is a mining company, and as other anons said it's probably wiped off of the face of the planet.

I don't go on biz much so I don't know how he is in other threads, but I do not think the tripfag has said anything outlandish, and other anons said similar things. I wouldn't mind researching into this more just for shits and giggles, and he gave me some good advice on how to do so, while reminding me that I would have to be extremely lucky. Don't be so hard on the fella. Tripfag, you are appreciated, and you others have been very helpful too. So thanks!
I like it here, I'll definitely lurk moar.

>I do not think the tripfag has said anything outlandish
the idea that a stock share would somehow survive two world wars, the greatest collapse of the stock market ever seen, the abandonment of the gold standard and multi-decade collapse of metals markets and mining, numerous mergers, bankruptcies and acquisitions and still have value after sitting ignored and abandoned in a dresser drawer for 112 years is frankly ridiculous.

the fact that the tripfag doesn't know this is also ridiculous.

his pretending to be a lawyer familiar with the subject while not knowing any of this is just the icing on the cake.

otherwise he seems well-intentioned, just a bit stupid is all.

You do have a very good point, but luckily I am not dumb enough to have too much hope in something like this. However he did say that I would have to be "shooting star lucky". I don't think he was saying this was a likely possibility. Anyway, anyone who takes investment advice from Veeky Forums and only from Veeky Forums probably will lose their money at some point anyway...so I wouldn't worry about him giving bad investment advice. Fools are quick to part with their money.

scripophily.net/soutmincom19.html
Don't know if it's the same certificate, but similar is selling for about $70 as a collector item.

oh I'm not worried about him at all.

I have him on my filter list, I have to manually open his comments if I want to read them.

I'm just giving the heads-up.
nobody here thinks he's a lawyer.

Probably worthless. But here is a newspaper link for your company's formation back then user.

newspapers.com/newspage/42269676/

Any changes in ownership will be on public record *somewhere*. Probably not on the Internet, but in a dusty corner of a county courthouse. I'd say the best thing to do is find out where those companies specifically operated, and check county records.

If you eventually find out the company that bought your company (or bought the company that had bought that company) you just need to contact their investor relations.

>Any changes in ownership will be on public record *somewhere*.
the one stock is on spripophily.net ()

those guys check a stock to see if it has modern value before selling it.

so he just needs to hunt down the other one which is frankly the more promising of the two since water is worth more than gold.

it won't be worth anything either though.

1901, pic attached

>ridiculous

Nah, I think I could have gotten a couple hundred Dollars in my case.