What are par stocks? and are old paper stock certificates still good?

Question

I have inherited a bunch of junk, in it are about 50 framed stock certificates from the late 1980's each for 1 share of stock, "par value" they are not marked void or anything like that. Are these worth anything?

Answer 1

if the companies still exist (or were acquired) they should still be worth something.

"par" is just accounting nonsense, and has little/nothing to do with the actual value of the stock.

do some research on the firm, and try to get the contact info for their investor relations department.  they should be able to tell you if you actually own the stock or not (sorry to say that digitalization has rendered paper certificates completely meaningless in some circumstances).  assuming you DO actually have claim to the shares, then they would be able to advise you on how to redeem them.

Answer 2

Could not tell you what something is worth without knowing the names of the companies.

Best. Take all the certificates and deposit them with a broker. You will have to prove that you have legal title to them. They will tell you what you have to do. Then, the broker will send the certificates out to the transfer agent and see what is still trading.

I hope some of the certs where for 1 share of Apple (AAPL), or a little software company called Microsoft (MSFT)