ISMOC presents organizations that were involved in the research, design, manufacturing and even rebranding of digital computers. Of course, these organizations must have left us securities printed on paper.
Therefore, companies that were only selling, leasing or servicing computers, writing software, offering time-sharing services, or using the Internet for selling whatever kind of products and services, are excluded.
Q2: Why are some securities not represented in the collection ?
First, the organization must meet the ISMOC collection criteria, see Q1 for that.
If an organization's certificates would fit the collection, then there are a few reasons why these are not represented :
- Many small companies have not issued any securities in paper form. Some larger companies who were wholly-owned subsidiaries may never have issued tradable securities. In these cases, shareholdings were written in the company's share register.
- Some recently founded companies may not be represented because their securities only exist in electronic book entries.
- Also, more and more securities become dematerialized and are not available anymore in printed form.
- Certificates may also have been lost forever as a result of accidental destruction or disasters.
- Furthermore, some securities have not appeared on the collector's market yet.
- Finally, it is possible that some securities exist but are not present in the ISMOC collection.
Q3: Is the entire ISMOC collection presented online ?
The project is under construction. Organizations and their historical securities will be added on a periodical basis.
Second, certificates were often issued in multiple denominations. Each denomination was often printed in another color but used the same design. At least one of these variants will be put on display.
The bottom line is that you may want to revisit ISMOC now and then.
Q4: What are securities, stocks, shares, bonds, debentures .. ?
Securities can roughly be divided in :
- debt securities, such as a bond, which represents a debt of a company, a society, a federal, statal or municipal authority, or a non-governmental organization
- equity securities, such as a stock certificate (also known as a share certificate), which represents part ownership of a company, society or association.
Q5: What is scripophily ?
Scripophily, a specialized field of numismatics, involves the collection and/or the study of stock and bond certificates and their related history. You can find more out about scripophily here .
