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Vine Company of Philadelphia Stock Certificate, 1804 [111859]

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Stock & Bond - Industrial Start Price:100.00 USD Estimated At:200.00 - 400.00 USD
Vine Company of Philadelphia Stock Certificate, 1804  [111859]
SOLD
250.00USDto i***y+ buyer's premium (62.50)
This item SOLD at 2021 May 13 @ 14:30UTC-7 : PDT/MST
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We believe this is the earliest dated wine stock certificate from America, issued to Henry Drinker (how appropo) for one share at $20. The only place the company name is mentioned is on the corporate seal, which is very unusual. Signed by P. Mullenberg as president. Certificate #60. Also known as the Pennsylvania Vine Company, it was founded by Peter Legaux in 1786 by selling shares. Legaux had bought an estate at Spring Hill of 206 acres. In 1793, only 139 shares had been sold and Legaux was having financial difficulties. He wrote to General Washington offering to sell his house as a country residence for the president during congressional sessions (then still held in Philadelphia) on condition that he be allowed to continue his "improvements in the cultivation of the vine"—a work that would be lost were Legaux to be, as he feared, sold up for debt. Though his property was, nominally at least, seized in execution of a writ of sale in 1792, by one means or another Legaux yet managed to hang on to it. In 1793, the Philadelphia Daily Advertiser proclaimed that the first vintage ever held in America would begin at the Spring Hill vineyard in a few weeks. To increase sales of the stock, post-1800, the company produced an elaborate prospectus which noted that there were 18,000 vines at the vineyard and had "procured plants of the Constantia vine from the Cape of Good Hope." This was the vine for which, so Legaux told La Rochefoucauld in 1795, he had paid the remarkable sum of forty guineas, and of which he did considerable advertising. It was not, however, the Constantia grape at all, or anything like it, being in fact the native hybrid best known as the Alexander. Legaux never gave up his insistence that the grape was what he said it was. Since he sold large quantities of it at premium prices under its attractive foreign name, the question has naturally arisen: Was he lying? Or was he honestly deceived? There is presumptive evidence both ways, but not of a kind to settle the matter." (History of Wine in America- UC Press). VF. Uncanceled.

Date:
Country (if not USA):
State: Pennsylvania
City: Philadelphi
Provenance: Ken Prag Collection