Vintage 1970s-1980s American Brands Inc. Stock Certificate 📜 Tobacco Americana! Green

What Became of the American Tobacco Company? 📜 American Brands, Inc. Common Stock, Green, the Old American Tobacco Company

Size: 12" x 8" ~ Issued and cancelled. They vary a little one to the next.

Vintage 1970s - 1980s American Brands Inc. Stock Certificate, Tobacco Americana! Green. Most I saw were from the 1970s. I saw this one from the 1980s, so I might have others. It's engraved and printed by the American Bank Note Company with an olive green border, and at the top center sits an engraved portrait of a Native American chief in a full feathered headdress.

This stock bears a striking vignette. My photographs can only capture a fraction of its beauty.

🏷️ Every Word That Matters

These are real issued certificates, countersigned, punch-cancelled and marked on the back as the shares changed hands.

🚬 From the Tobacco Trust to American Brands

The American Tobacco Company was founded in 1890 by James Buchanan Duke, who merged the leading cigarette makers into one firm that made 90 percent of the cigarettes produced that year. Over the next two decades it absorbed about 250 companies and came to be known as the Tobacco Trust, until the Supreme Court ordered it broken up in 1911, splitting it into American Tobacco, R.J. Reynolds, Liggett & Myers and Lorillard.

The American Tobacco Company faced growing health concerns in the late 1960s, prompting a diversification into other fields, and in 1969 it formed a holding company called American Brands, Inc., with tobacco as one business among many. By the 1980s, under chairman Edward W. Whittemore, whose facsimile signature is on the 1980s printings, the company was selling Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, Carlton and Tareyton cigarettes, owned the James B. Beam Distilling Company, and it told shareholders it had spent more than $2.2 billion on acquisitions since 1966. The tobacco division was acquired by Brown & Williamson in 1994, and American Brands renamed itself Fortune Brands, ending 104 years of the American Tobacco name.

📜 Paper Shares

The first stock certificate was issued in 1606 by the Dutch East India Company, and four hundred and seven years later, the Walt Disney Company issued one of the last paper stock certificates from a major corporation in 2013, marking the end of an era.

🖼️ Display

Envision enriching your living space with this exceptional vintage collectible, a home decor piece for any room! It's a great gift for anybody in finance, a history buff, or anybody who remembers a pack of Luckies in a shirt pocket.