Vintage Penn Central Stock Certificate 🚂 From 1980s Railroad History

Remember the Penn Central? 🚂 The Penn Central Corporation Common Stock Certificate

Size: 12" x 8" ~ Little to no wear. They vary a little one to the next.

This is a real Penn Central Corporation common stock certificate from the years after the famous railroad crash, when the old company was reborn as a conglomerate. Up top is a finely engraved allegorical vignette of classical figures gathered around a great gear wheel, orange-red lathe-work panels run down both sides, and the company name and the facsimile corporate seal sit in crisp black on cream paper. My photographs can only capture a fraction of the beauty of these stock certificates, printed on heavy paper stock like a dollar bill, only stiffer.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• THE PENN CENTRAL CORPORATION
• ORGANIZED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
• COMMON STOCK, PAR VALUE $1 PER SHARE
• CUSIP 707271 10 2
• COUNTERSIGNED AND REGISTERED: MORGAN SHAREHOLDER SERVICES TRUST COMPANY, TRANSFER AGENT AND REGISTRAR
• The facsimile corporate seal, dated 1846

These are issued certificates, so each one carries its own paper trail: typed holder and share details, signatures and endorsements on the back, transfer-agent stamps and the like. That's the record of the offices it passed through, not damage. The back carries the printed abbreviation key and the assignment form.

📉 The Biggest Crash in Railroad History

The big Eastern railroads were already hurting, losing business to automobiles, buses and trucks on the new limited-access highways, and they couldn't change a fare or a freight rate, merge or abandon a line without the Interstate Commerce Commission's approval. The Penn Central Transportation Company was born when the Pennsylvania Railroad took over its old rival the New York Central Railroad on February 1, 1968, and regulators made it take in the bankrupt New York, New Haven and Hartford too. It didn't last. On June 21, 1970, the board voted to file for bankruptcy, and Penn Central, then the sixth-largest corporation in the United States, became the largest corporate insolvency in U.S. history until Texaco in 1987. On April 1, 1976, its working rail lines went to the federally owned Conrail. The Penn Central empire had reached well beyond trains, with the Buckeye Pipeline, the Six Flags theme parks and a 24 percent stake in Madison Square Garden among its holdings.

That's where this certificate comes in. In 1978 the old Pennsylvania Railroad company itself absorbed its parent and changed its name to The Penn Central Corporation, the name printed here, and ran as a small conglomerate with interests from pipelines to entertainment. That's why the seal says 1846, the year the Pennsylvania Railroad was chartered, and why it's organized under the laws of Pennsylvania. In March 1994 it changed its name again, to American Premier Underwriters, and became part of Carl Lindner's American Financial Group. So these certificates come from the stretch between 1978 and 1994.

🏡 Display

It's a great piece for any railroad fan, and it looks sharp framed in an office or a den next to a picture of Penn Station or Grand Central, the two great terminals of the railroads that made Penn Central.