Columbia Graphophone Manufacturing Co. - 1917 dated Orange Stock Certificate - Very Rare Type
Inv# ET1000A
Stock
Stock printed by American Bank Note Company. Attractive vignette of angels with Columbia Records logo and songbook. Very Scarce! Some staining.
The Columbia Phonograph Company was originally founded in the US by Edward D. Easton in 1887, initially as a distributor with a local monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Delaware. It also made its own compatible cylinder recordings. In 1901, Columbia began selling disc records (invented and patented by Emile Berliner of the Victor Talking Machine Company) and phonographs. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor discs. Edison discs and Columbia's acoustic records both had a nominal playback speed of 80 rpm.
From about 1898 until 1922 the US parent company managed a UK subsidiary, the Columbia Graphophone Manufacturing Company. Its headquarters and studios were established in Victorian warehouses at 102-108 Clerkenwell Road shortly before the First World War, and the buildings were a key location in the development of the British recording industry until the 1930s. In 1917, the Columbia Graphophone Company was registered as a British company, with the shares being held by the American firm. A general market downturn in 1921 affected the whole entertainment industry. Profits turned to losses, and in late 1922 the creditors of the US parent company filed a petition for involuntary bankruptcy: Columbia went into receivership. Seeking to raise cash, Columbia sold the British branch in December 1922 to a group of investors led by Columbia's General Manager in Britain, the American-born Louis Sterling (1879–1958). Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Graphophone_Company
A stock certificate is issued by businesses, usually companies. A stock is part of the permanent finance of a business. Normally, they are never repaid, and the investor can recover his/her money only by selling to another investor. Most stocks, or also called shares, earn dividends, at the business's discretion, depending on how well it has traded. A stockholder or shareholder is a part-owner of the business that issued the stock certificates.
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