That would have been shocking if it wasn’t for the fact that US currency used to have naked women on it too
I believe all stock certificates had to have a representation of a person on them at one time, so this is not so unusual.
The Nashua Telegraph for Feb 9, 1980 had an article about measures needed for anti-counterfeiting of stock certificates that mentions the SEC saying that certificates “should afford the maximum protection against counterfeiting and for this purpose the human figure, with plainly discernible features and a minimum three-quarters frontal view of the face should be part of every vignete as a central figure”
You should see the National Gallery. Naked nudity everywhere. Absolutely disgraceful.
if you search around scripophily sites, you’ll find lots of partial nudity (both male and female.
you’ll also find this.
I remember the good old days of stock certificates. What a hassle. However, there was often some risque art on them. Stock certificate etchings were the last surviving branch of the Ecole des Beaux Artes, so you’d see figure studies that looked like they were copied from sculptures on a formal building.
For example, Bulova Time certificates had a nearly naked woman on them. If nothing else, her nipples were showing. I’m not sure what this had to do with telling time. Portec had two guys in loin clothes and not much else. I think one of them was Mercury. Someone better versed in mythology could probably recognize them from the various staffs and symbols.
Some of the allegorical figures were clearly real people. The woman on Northwest Pipeline certificates, modestly draped, had real character. She could have been a superhero, especially posed inside a stylized atom as she was. The determined woman on Columbia Pictures certificates looked like she was the brains of the outfit. I’m guessing she was in her well preserved 50s, so she might have been a board members wife.
Nudity often showed up in business publications. I remember an automotive oil company with a shirtless young woman as their mascot. I think the Hollywood Hayes Office also had an impact on magazines, so this became less common. Business documents were another matter. Hell, the cover of the first issue of Fortune had a topless Fortuna, goddess of chance and fortune right out on the cover. They’d have to cover it up on the newsstand nowadays.
The Nude are the 0.01%, but you are too modest to join them.
I heard a story about why they replaced those certificates with more generic versions.
Apparently the stock was being bought up in very small amounts by normal readers as souvenirs of sorts – “hey look I have $20 of PlayboyCorp framed next to my pool table.” A huge percentage of the ownership of the company was effectively unknown, and the company was unable to do buybacks or move the shares around.
So sometime in the nineties (?) they replaced it with a bland design so it would no longer be a collectible.
It’s a shame that Microsoft decided against the nude Bill Gates stock cert before their IPO.
The stock proved too popular for the company’s good: so many people purchased one share and took delivery of the certificate that Playboy was spending a fortune sending out annual reports and dividend checks. They issued a more modest new certificate and did a reverse split to call all stocks back in (for two old Playboy shares you were given one new Playboy share; otherwise you got cashed out) . If you didn’t send the stock, you lost your shares. The old piece of paper is still worth a lot more than the current live stock.
He’s been CEO what, twice so far? They just need to get to the tipping point where people won’t:
-Buy supposedly underwritten software
-Cure some curable disease (like Polio, tonight in your neighborhood)
etc.
unless the founders put on a floor show of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
What the heck are you talking about.
Jojo no Kimyou no Bouken …er, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 or 죠죠의 기묘한 모험 TV판 is a show where superpowers and new ventures meet in high fashion and carry on in fan art that’s cheerily cis/trans agnostic, all about impossible poses (though there are scenes where they hold for 20 minutes, but they’re illustrations;) and seems to have influences on
http://threepanelsoul.com/2015/05/04/bro/
and from there you just have to think of Microsoft’s Minimum Viable Business in terms of outreach, and you have a future-facing business happy mutants can be proud of.
Not that stock certificates are honored by the exchanges anymore, the meme of being exposed to a particular brand of risk holds forth. Plus the help’s not gonna throw those out unless they have barbecue sauce on them.
Hubba hubba.
InB4 Microsoft BOB themed slashfic
Sure, I had that stock certificate, but I only bought it for the articles.
I only bought the stock for the articles.
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