A relative just passed away and in going thru his items we found some stock certificates. I have never dealt with paper stock certificates before. What would you do? They have no holes in them so I *assume* they are current. The companies still exist. The certificates are from decades ago.
Pretty much what he said. Make sure everything is cleared with the estate attorney so you can appropriately transfer.
Used to be, people opened a brokerage account, e.g. Estate of John Doe. Then the executor has to gather the supporting docs: Death Certs, Affidavid of Domicile, etc Then deposit the certs to a broker. They will then check with available REORG sources, market values. A lot of really old stuff is worthless, makes good wall decorations. But i have seen moldy certs of Standard Oil. who knows. **Used to be, but few things are as they used to be.
Are they cool looking like this Erie Railroad one?: https://www.ebay.com/itm/195552180105?hash=item2d87d17789:g:Lb0AAOSwEkpjknpU&amdata=enc:AQAHAAAA4Kh9kT/v4jjnmmLwPb0ABXDO08cSmutFoCn1LjHGl1MW5+5gjNjhZhN9M2JNFKSPhmEYoeBtGfzHhmrUKz60SDw8dQxh3z7sTbQRDdJzNiU1XughD22cIX03hUjNhKBelwNXjyBbD6BDWyfTFjN5r2Sgx69MXEcOGbJ0L+jGVuioHE1l4rTVy2zKoIWtsnUeluZsNTIWlc58G/eCn/a094gjCDJLhUwFBMIwFOWXUj0Lx5HBF0juEHlNdS0A6iWAeU7onFgD2AhrCjjO2Ci92dkxiy5cwXw6VNSu0KLVry8t|tkp:Bk9SR7qDteu9YQ
Collecting old stock/bond/similar-financial documents as a hobby is called Scripophily. As a mostly passive scripophilist, I have about 300 certs/documents in my collection. 2 of my faves are a Playboy cert, and a Lionel Train cert.
I recall when Playboy announced they would no longer be issuing stock certificates. People send in their certificates and asked for new certificates in different denominations. The reason being that different denominations had different beautiful women on them. Also maybe stock certificates changed in appearance over time.