Images Desperately Needed

Brunswick Terminal & Railway Securities Company stock certificate — Example of a certificate, 640 pixels wide, displayed on this site.

Images are crucial to the identification of certificates. Images are displayed on this website when they are of sufficient quality.

Since 1990, I have managed to acquire some sort of digitial image for almost 70% of the known varieties. HOWEVER, over 3,000 of those images are too poor for display on this site and more than 4,500 are small and need replacement. Over 10,000 (!) varieties are listed on this site based strictly on verbal descriptions and images in auction catalogs and price lists.

To say it bluntly, I NEED YOUR HELP acquiring decent images of over 18,000 railroad certificates. I estimate that anyone who has been collecting North American railroad certificates for more than two or three years has SOMETHING I need for this site. Or they can help improve images here if they will only take the time.

And please remember, I am maintaining this site for COLLECTORS . I don't make a cent off this site.

You can help this project greatly by sending scans or photographs of certificates you have.

Images of any and all certificates will help add to the knowledge base by contributing serial numbers, dates and share values. I appreciate photographs and can use some of them when they are not terribly distorted and unevenly lit.

Scanned images of certificates are the most valuable for illustrating certificates. In general, I prefer images to be scanned at resolutions of least 300 dpi (dots per inch = 118 dots per cm) if possible. Lower-resolution scans can be used for display on the website, but 200 dpi is probably the lowest resolution acceptable.

Image Statistics

Images displayed (of adequate size and quality)	16,797
Images displayed (but small size or poor quality)	4,552
TOTAL IMAGES DISPLAYED ON THIS SITE		21,349

Images acquired, but too poor for display	3,067
Images seen only in printed references	1,400
Images reported, but never seen	9,344
IMAGES NEEDED FOR WEBSITE		13,811

TOTAL CERTIFICATE VARIETIES KNOWN		35,160
(Statistics current to the last database upload.)

Scanning suggestions. I have a whole section of this website dedicated to scanning certificates. In short:

I DO NOT need

stubs
coupons
backs (unless celebrity signatures are present)

Celebrity signatures

Scan at 600 dpi with extra space around the signature.

Certificates too large for your scanner?

Scan in two or more pieces.
Keep the certificate oriented the same for all the pieces.
Try to keep at least 1.5" of overlap between scans.
Remove the cover of your scanner for delicate certificates.
Send the pieces to me and I will patch together. (Tell me if you want me to send you back the "stitched" images.)

Save format

I convert all images to JPG (JPEG) format, but you can send images in any format convenient for you. I do not need super-high quality images; medium-high level quality is okay.

How to send

If sending a few JPGs, send as e-mail attachments. (Zipping does NOT compress JPGs.)
If sending several images or large images, send via WeTransfer.com or Dropbox Transfer. Both are free.