My own personal AWS S3 bucket

I was able to gain access to my stock, which had split into multiple shares several times in the intervening decades, and had also turned into two symbols, via a spin-out of Ameriprise. To my great surprise, this single share had turned into holdings worth thousands of dollars of value in modern times.

Because it was bought for me originally in the 80s as a physical stock certificate (and I had no clue where that certificate physically was, or whether it had been lost/destroyed), unfortunately some of that value would be eaten by fees if I wanted to liquidate the stock: a 2-step process involving a lost certificate printing/mailing fee, and then sending the certificate back in to sell it. My understanding is that Wall Street wanted to discourage the management of paper certificates over the last few years to make the backoffice much more efficient, and introducing fees for printing lost certificates is unfortunately one of the ways Wall Street accomplished that, among other incentives for digitization.

So, I just let the registered stock sit there in its digital form, rather than take the fee hit -- I figured there might be some chance AXP/AMP might be taken private, in which case I'd receive a check in the mail, now that my address was updated with the transfer agent.

Then, a couple of years ago, I was going through some of my Mom's old photos of me and I came across the original 1985 stock certificate in her records. A big elaborate document with a fancy seal on it, I am now wondering whether it might be worth more as a long-term collectible -- a memory of a prior era of "long term value", for collectors of economic history. Regardless of whether it is or isn't, at least my 1-year-old self didn't have to worry about its "AXP Wallet", or any other such absurdity 1-year-olds couldn't possibly manage for themselves.

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Curious update: after I wrote this comment, I did some research on American Express's corporate history 1985 to present. That led me to this detailed LATimes writeup of their 1994 spin-off of... Lehman Brothers (!!!). No kidding. I love this line, and the unironic hubris it suggests: "The spinoff will give Lehman executives what they have dreamed of for years: freedom from American Express. [...] Long an independent pillar of Wall Street, the august Lehman Bros. was acquired by American Express in 1984 and merged with Shearson. But the Lehman culture never fit with Shearson or American Express, and the firms never developed the synergies envisioned." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-01-25-fi-15121-... ... Of course, 14 years later, Lehman would collapse and enter the history books as the failed investment banking firm emblematic of speculative risk-taking during the 2008 financial crisis. I was working in my first post-college job in an office across the street from Lehman's building, and I still vividly remember the long line of suddenly-laid-off workers streaming out of the entrance, distraught, in September, 2008. Meanwhile, American Express keeps chugging along, a 171-year-old American corporation. Maybe corporate culture does matter, after all.