Vintage 1980s Cities Service Company Stock Certificate, CITGO 20th Century Icon!

We are introducing the vintage 1980s Cities Service Company Stock Certificate, a Timeless Icon from the Early 20th Century!

12" x 8"  ~  Little to no wear. 

The company traces its heritage back to the early 1900s and oil entrepreneur Henry Latham Doherty. After quickly climbing the ladder of success in manufacturing and electric utility, Doherty 1910 created the Cities Service Company to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities. He began by acquiring gas-producing properties in the mid-continent and southwest.

The company then developed a pipeline system, tapping dozens of gas pools. To make this gas available to consumers, Doherty moved to acquire distributing companies and tied them into a common supply source. Cities Service became the first company in the mid-continent to use the slack demand period of summer to refill depleted fields near its market areas. Thus, gas could be conveniently and inexpensively withdrawn during peak demand times. In 1931, Cities Service completed the nation's first long-distance high-pressure natural gas transportation system, a 24-inch pipeline 1,000 miles from Amarillo, Texas, to Chicago.

A logical step in the company's program for finding and developing natural gas supplies was its entry into the oil business. This move was marked by significant discoveries at Augusta, Kansas, in 1914 and El Dorado a year later. In 1928, a Cities Service subsidiary, Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company, discovered the Oklahoma City field, one of the world's largest. Another participated in the discovery of the East Texas field, which, in its time, was the most sensational on the globe.

Over three decades, the company sponsored the Cities Service Concerts on NBC radio. These musical broadcasts, which aired from 1925 to 1956, featured a variety of vocalists and musicians. In 1944, they were retitled Highways in Melody, and later, the series was known as The Cities Service Band of America. 1964, the company moved its headquarters from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to Tulsa.

At the height of Cities Service's growth, Congress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, forcing the company to divest itself of its utility operations or oil and gas holdings. Cities Service elected to remain in the petroleum business. The first steps to liquidate investments in its public utilities were taken in 1943 and affected over 250 different utility corporations.

At the same time, the government was nearing completion of a major refinery at Rose Bluff just outside Lake Charles, Louisiana, which would become the foundation of the company's manufacturing operation. Using designs developed by Cities Service and the Kellogg Co., the plant was dedicated only 18 months after the groundbreaking. A month before Allied troops landed in France, enough 100-octane aviation gasoline fueled 1,000 daily bomber sorties from England to Germany. Government funding through the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) also prompted Cities Service to build plants to manufacture butadiene, which is used to make synthetic rubber and toluene, a fuel octane booster and solvent.

Cities Service grew into a fully diversified oil and gas company with global operations in the following years. Its green, expanding circle marketing logo became familiar across the nation. CEOs such as W. Alton Jones and Burl S. Watson ran the company during this time.

Cities Service Company inaugurated the use of the Citgo brand in 1965 (officially styled "CITGO") for its refining, marketing, and retail petroleum businesses (which became known internally as the RMT Division for Refining, Marketing, and Transportation). CITGO remained a trademark and not a company name until the 1983 sale of the RMT Division of Cities Service to Southland Corporation (now 7-Eleven Inc.).

The demise of Cities Service and the birth of Citgo Petroleum Corporation
In 1982, T. Boone Pickens, founder of Mesa Petroleum, offered to buy Cities Service Company. Citgo responded by offering to buy Mesa, the first use of what became known as the Pac-Man take-over defense, i.e., an offer initiated by a takeover target. Cities Service threatened to dissolve itself by incremental sales rather than being taken over by Mesa, stating that it believed that the pieces would sell for more than Pickens was offering for the whole. Cities Service Company located what they thought would be a "white knight" to give them a better deal and entered into a merger agreement with Gulf Oil Corporation. Late in the summer of 1982, Gulf Oil terminated the merger agreement, claiming that Cities Service's reserve estimates were over-stated. Over fifteen years of litigation resulted. (For a more detailed discussion of the Cities Service vs. Gulf Oil litigation, see Gulf Oil#Demise.) Ironically, two years later, Gulf Oil itself would collapse due to a Pickens-initiated takeover attempt.

In the chaotic takeover, Oil terminated its deal; Cities Service eventually entered into a merger agreement with and was acquired by Occidental Petroleum Corporation—a deal closed in the fall of 1982. That same year, Cities Service Company transferred all of the assets of its Refining, Marketing, and Transportation division (which comprised its refining and retail petroleum business) into the newly formed Citgo Petroleum Corporation subsidiary to ease the divestiture of the division, which Occidental had no interest in retaining. Under an agreement entered into in 1982, Citgo and the Citgo and Cities Service brands were sold by Occidental in 1983 to Southland Corporation, original owners of the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores.

Imagine enhancing your living space with this rare vintage collectible, a unique piece of home decor for any room! Stock certificates, like this one, are a genuinely scarce commodity. They become increasingly difficult to acquire once they enter museums and private collections. With such limited availability, this is a unique and privileged opportunity to own a piece of history, creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

My photographs can only capture a fraction of the beauty of these stock certificates. They were meticulously printed on heavy paper stock, similar to a dollar bill but stiffer and more durable, ensuring their vibrancy and newness for a long time. This unique feature, coupled with the variety of exciting signatures they bear, from the company President and Secretary to other historical figures, adds significant provenance and value to an already valuable item. The paper's weight, the ink's vibrancy, and the historical significance of the signatures, each a direct link to the past, all contribute to the worth of this item, sparking a sense of fascination and intrigue.