How would I find out if old shares to a company are worth anything?

Question

My significant other just lost her mother. We were going through some old lock boxes and found two documents that were both worth a hundred shares a piece in an old radio company. She believes it has since closed its doors but these are legit documents stamped by 2 major banks. They are the originals, how do I go about figuring this out and and does anyone have any advice. Thanks in advance for your help.....

Answer 1

Chances are on a monetary basis the shares are worthless.

But wait a minute!!!!

It's quite simple, you can simply search the names of the companies in yahoo or google, and if they are still actively traded, they will show up.

The problem, as one person mentioned, is that if one or both companies merged, or was bought out, typically there is a name change. There is new stock distributed that reflects the new name, and it replaces the original stock.

Now I did say that the certificates were worthless from a monetary stand point, but I did not say they were entirely worthless. There is a huge community of people that collect stock certificates.

Here's a link that will give you a sort of "Certificate Collecting 101"

http://www.nyge.com/webguide.htm

Answer 2

Google the name of the companies on the internet. If you find a reference you might be on to something. Otherwise, you would have to do a lot of hunting through old archives to find out how the companies met their demise. If they were merged into other companies, you still might have something.

Answer 3

ok try to find out if the company is still a business, if not maybe research on line to see if another company bought them out. maybe contact the banks..good luck as I work for a mutual fund company and people find old certs all the time. whatever you do dont destroy them