Antique 1910s - 1930s Titanic International Mercantile Marine Stock Certificate 📜 Brown White Star Line

The Company That Owned the Titanic 🚢 An Antique 1910s-1930s International Mercantile Marine Company Stock Certificate, Brown

Size: 12" x 8"

A real, issued common stock certificate of the INTERNATIONAL MERCANTILE MARINE COMPANY, INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY, engraved in brown by the AMERICAN BANK NOTE CO. of New York. Up top a four-funnel liner steams into a busy harbor with tugs and barges at the pier; down below a seated classical woman holds a pair of dividers in front of a ship's hull. CERTIFICATE FOR LESS THAN 100 SHARES sits in both corner shields, and the TENS and UNITS columns run down the right edge for the clerks' punches. Every one was signed, stamped and cancelled.

✂️ The punch styles

You get to pick. Style 1 has the round cancellation holes only. Style 2 has perforated letters punched through the top vignette - on the sheets I've read they spell J P M & Co, and collectors take them for J. P. Morgan & Co., the bank behind the whole company. Style 3 has the letters along the bottom instead.

🏦 Morgan's ocean

J. P. Morgan put IMM together in 1902 to do to the Atlantic what he'd done to steel and railroads - buy up the big lines and stop them undercutting each other. The trust took in the American Line and Red Star Line of Clement Griscom, its first president, Bernard Baker's Atlantic Transport Line, the Leyland Line from John Ellerman, and the jewel of the lot, the White Star Line. The White Star ships kept flying the British flag - Morgan owned the company that owned them. It rattled Britain so badly that the government helped Cunard build the Lusitania and the Mauretania to keep a British line in the race.

🧊 White Star and the Titanic

J. Bruce Ismay of White Star took over as IMM's president in 1904, and he was aboard the Titanic on her maiden voyage in April 1912 - IMM's ship, on IMM's line. He got off in a lifeboat, came into New York on the Carpathia, and never got out from under it. IMM went into receivership in 1915-1916, sold White Star back into British hands - to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company - in 1926, merged with the Roosevelt Steamship Company in 1931, and in 1943 took the name of its best-known line, United States Lines. White Star itself ended up merged with Cunard in 1934.

📅 How old are they

These are from a long run. The stamps on the sheets I've photographed go from 1920 to 1931, and the later ones name Central Hanover Bank and Trust Company as registrar, a bank that only existed from 1929, while earlier ones name the Central Trust Company of New York. I have a stack of them, so I won't give you one date: the one you get will carry its own date, number, owner, share count and stamps, and may look a little different from the one in my pictures.

📜 About these

They're 12 by 8 inches, engraved on heavy paper. A Titanic buff, a maritime-history wall or anybody who collects Morgan's Wall Street will love one. The supply is finite - IMM has been gone for generations, nobody's issuing its stock again, and once these last ones are framed, they'll be very difficult to acquire.