Antique 1930s - 1950s American Bank Note Company Common Stock Certificate 🦅 Orange, Bald Eagle Vignette

Ever Seen American Bank Note's Own Stock? 🦅 Antique Common Stock Certificate, Orange, Bald Eagle Vignette

Size: 12" x 8"

🦅 I love this one. American Bank Note Company engraved stock certificates for companies all over the country, and this is a share certificate for American Bank Note itself, the money printer's own stock, printed by its own engravers. Orange border, a bald eagle with its wings up on a rock by the pines, and a big COMMON across the middle.

🔍 What's On It

An engraved certificate for 100 shares of Common Stock of the AMERICAN BANK NOTE COMPANY, INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, with a big orange 100 in each top corner and TEN DOLLARS EACH, IN THE COMMON STOCK. Across the top it lays out the whole company: AUTHORIZED CAPITAL STOCK, SIX PER CENT. CUMULATIVE PREFERRED STOCK $5,000,000 PAR VALUE $50.00, COMMON STOCK $10,000,000 PAR VALUE $10.00. The registrar was Bankers Trust Company and the transfer agent Guaranty Trust Company of New York, and down at the bottom, under a blind-embossed sunburst seal, is the printer's imprint, which of course reads American Bank Note Company.

These were really issued: signed by the company's officers, countersigned, and punch-cancelled when they were turned in, and the backs carry the transfer forms, many of them filled in and stamped by brokers, the paper trail of shares changing hands on Wall Street.

🏛️ The Company That Printed Everyone Else's Money

American Bank Note traces itself back to 1795 and an engraving firm started by Robert Scot, the first official engraver of the U.S. Mint. In 1858 several of the big security printers merged into the American Bank Note Company in New York City. It printed U.S. currency, including the Civil War Demand Notes, U.S. and foreign postage stamps, banknotes for more than a hundred countries, and the stock and bond certificates of corporations across the country. In 1908 it finished its landmark building at 70 Broad Street, a few steps off Wall Street, and a big printing plant in the South Bronx. The company went into Chapter 11 in 1999 as paper certificates gave way to electronic trading, came out in 2002, and carries on today as ABCorp in Boston.

That engraved eagle, the lathe-work border and the raised ink weren't just decoration. Fine engraving is very hard to counterfeit, and that was the whole point of a security printer like American Bank Note.

📅 When

The transfer agent printed on these, Guaranty Trust Company of New York, merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1959 to become Morgan Guaranty Trust, so this printing of the certificate comes from before that. Dated examples of this same orange 100-share certificate turn up from the 1930s into the 1950s, so that's the range. You'll get one from that run.

📏 Details

• American Bank Note Company Common Stock certificate, 100 shares, orange border
• Engraved bald-eagle vignette, COMMON underprint
• Issued, signed and punch-cancelled, with the transfer form on the back
• About 12" x 8"
• You'll get one certificate like the ones shown; dates, names and numbers vary

🖼️ Frame it for an office, a library or a trading desk. It's a great gift for anybody in banking or finance, or anybody who collects money, since this is the company that printed so much of it.