Vintage 1960s San Juan Racing Association Stock Certificate 📜 Coca Cola of New York 1978 Bid El Comandante Puerto Rico

Why Did Coca-Cola of New York Bid for a Puerto Rico Racetrack? 📜 A Vintage 1960s San Juan Racing Association Stock Certificate, El Comandante, Puerto Rico

Size: 12" x 8"

A real, issued common stock certificate of SAN JUAN RACING ASSOCIATION, INC., INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO, printed in blue and red by the COLUMBIAN BANK NOTE COMPANY: AUTHORIZED CAPITAL 2,000,000 SHARES, par value $2.50, countersigned by the Registrar and Transfer Company, with a seal reading INCORPORATED 1954 PUERTO RICO and a red block that says the stock was ISSUED SUBJECT TO THE TERMS OF THE LICENSE GRANTED BY THE RACING COMMISSION OF PUERTO RICO. The back carries the printed Conditions of Issuance and the transfer form.

🐎 Camarero

You can't tell this company's story without a horse. Camarero, foaled in Puerto Rico in 1951, won 56 races in a row between April 19, 1953 and August 17, 1955 - still the world record - and took Puerto Rico's first Triple Crown along the way. Attendance jumped 25% by the end of 1954, the crowds chanted "Camarero en punta" - Camarero up front - and since the rules didn't allow betting on a favorite that heavy, for most of the streak nobody at the track could even put money on him. He died on August 27, 1956, and more than 10,000 people came to Quintana to say goodbye, months before the San Juan Racing Association, incorporated in 1954, opened its new track, El Comandante, in Carolina in January 1957. The story told on the island is that Camarero drew such throngs that Puerto Rico needed a bigger, more modern track to hold them - and that track was El Comandante. His remains were moved from the old Quintana track to El Comandante in 1958.

The company moved the races to a brand-new El Nuevo Comandante in Canóvanas, which opened on October 31, 1976, and Camarero's remains followed in 1994. In 2006 the track was renamed Hipódromo Camarero for him. It wasn't always smooth: in April 1978 the jockeys refused to ride a scheduled card, and the fight went all the way to the federal appeals court in Boston.

📻 Disco 92

Here's the part nobody believes. The racetrack company owned radio stations in the States - WYSP in Philadelphia, WQAL in Cleveland, WKLS in Atlanta, KRLY in Houston, WJMD in Washington - and in June 1975 its New York FM station on 92.3 became Mellow 92, WKTU. On July 24, 1978, it went 24-hour disco as Disco 92, and that fall it went from worst to first, knocking WABC off the top with 18-to-30-year-olds.

🥤 The Coca-Cola bid

And then Coke came calling. On December 8, 1978, the Washington Post reported that a new broadcasting subsidiary of Coca-Cola of New York, the regional bottler, headed by former Washington Post Co. president Larry Israel, was negotiating to buy San Juan Racing - the track and its radio stations - for about $66 million - $20 a share, $17.50 in cash and $2.50 in short-term notes, against a stock trading around $14. New York Coke had bought WIXT-TV in Syracuse that January. Broadcasting magazine ran the story on December 11 - $20 a share for all 3.3 million shares - and added that the company's earnings were being dragged down by its money-losing Washington Diplomats soccer team. The track itself was still the company's principal money-maker, Broadcasting said - the only track in Puerto Rico, with the exclusive franchise for off-track betting. Not bad for a horse track. SJR still owned WKTU in 1981, when it sold the station to Infinity Broadcasting.

📅 How old are they?

The seal's 1954 is the year the company was formed. These blue certificates from Columbian Bank Note come from its 1960s years - a later orange version with a jockey and a CUSIP number came after. The one you get will carry its own date, number, owner and share count, and may look a little different from my pictures.

🏇 About these certificates

They're 12 by 8 inches, with the stamps and signatures of real use. It's a great one for a horse racing fan, anybody from Puerto Rico, a disco or radio collector, or a Coca-Cola collector who likes a good story. The supply is finite - nobody's issuing San Juan Racing stock again, and once these last ones are framed, they'll be very difficult to acquire.