Although Bob Schell has shares of oil, railroads, various companies and the Third Reich, it's the "vignettes" on the stock certificates that draw the most attention in the world of "scripophily."
Most certificates are decorated with a vignette similar to a trademark. In Schell's collection, he's got stocks dating back to the 1800s, so the vignettes were artwork etched in steel for the printing presses of that time.
"It took months for someone to do the vignette," Schell said.
Schell, a Fairfax Station resident, packed up thousands of stock certificates, bonds and other documents for the scripophily show last weekend in Alexandria. He started his scripophily collection in the early 1980s while collecting model trains. Now he's known on the scripophily circuit as a specialist in the "specimen" field. Specimens are like sample certificates that come out of the printer's personal files and many times weren't put into production.
Images of women made good vignettes, and some were used over and over again. Liberty, Justice, Mercury, Commerce, Loyalty, Guardian and Victory were all notable vignettes on stocks.
They were similar in appearance to women that were painted on the nose of the bombers in WW II.
"These were the standard vignettes," Schell said. "There's some very racy stuff. For its day, it was risqué."
Schell has one from the Melville Shoe Co. with an intricate vignette.
"He spent six months working on this engraving," Schell said.
Some of the more notable things in his files include a 1940 4-percent bond in Germany's Third Reich, an 1866 American Express bond signed by Henry Wells and William Fargo, an International Mercantile Marine certificate signed by one of the officers on the Titanic, a Confederate war bond that paid 6-percent interest, and his most valuable, a Standard Oil Trust certificate signed by J. D. Rockefeller. Schell keeps the Standard Oil in a bank's safe deposit box. Some of the bonds and stock certificates go for $25, while some are worth thousands of dollars.
SCRIPOPHILY gained momentum as a hobby in the 1970s, but the term "scripophily" wasn't coined until 1981. The London Financial Times had a contest to name the hobby.
"Some guy came up with this won the contest," Schell said.
Schell's collection is sorted into albums, and there is a historical story behind every item. He has a Maryland, Delaware & Virginia Railroad certificate from 1910 that was actually a steamboat company that traveled up the Potomac River. Then the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. was actually a conglomerate of various local railroads. The old RF&P railroad uses the tracks that the Virginia Railway Express uses today, he added.
"I've donated some railroad certificates to the Fairfax Station railroad museum," he said.
Judy Schell learns from the hobby, as well. She attends some of the shows with her husband. She's a vignette fan, too.
"Some of the train ones that I think are fantastic," she said, "they're just not worth that much."
This year, the local show at the Homestead Inn on Edsall Road was bigger than usual, according to manager Ashok Lavani.
"This time there were a lot of people," Lavani said. "Couple of guys from Germany, and they stayed here."
Schell had one collector, Larry Folater, stay at his house during the show. Folater is a collector from Michigan, whose specialty is automobile certificates. Schell stayed at Folater's house sometime ago, when he went to a show in Michigan.
"The Scripophily Guide" by Howard Shakespeare, is the bible for collectors and lists seven different countries that have scripophily collectors. In English, there are shares, ordinary shares, preference shares, bonds or debentures, bearer [bonds] and founders shares.