Section 01 · 4 entries
The Certificate
What the instrument legally is.
Four entries on the instrument itself: what the document said, what secured it, and where the claim went when the paper stopped being issued.
Guilloche is cut by machine to a mathematical rule, which is why a hand cannot copy it convincingly.
Photo: Guilloché-Muster auf Uhrwerkplatine 01 · Wikimedia CommonsThe entries
- 01 · 1
What a certificate is
An engraved share certificate is a receipt for a claim: a stated fraction of a company, with a right to vote and a right to whatever is left after everybody else is paid. The engraving, the seal and the counterfoil are all anti-forgery engineering, and the document itself has now almost entirely disappeared into a register entry.
- 01 · 2
Bearer and registered
Whether the paper itself is the claim, or merely evidence of an entry elsewhere.
- 01 · 3
The counterfoil
The stub that stays in the book, and the audit trail it creates.
- 01 · 4
Dematerialisation
The paper leaves and the register remains.