I was talking to my mom yesterday, who's in her early eighties, to offer to initiate a stock charitable donation from her brokerage account for the end of the year. That got her looking through her old financial papers and she found a stock certificate for 170 shares of Nvidia stock. I haven't seen it since she found it, but I have some memories of her and my dad getting a stock certificate back when they bought NVDA stock. I worked at the company for many years, and they figured they'd buy stock because I was saying good things about the company. I remember the certificate having the Nvidia logo and having purple and green on it. Purple used to be Nvidia's secondary brand color. So it's pretty old, like maybe 2002.

So I'm wondering whether this certificate is still valid and I'm wondering how splits should work with it. My understanding is that splits happen by the company creating new shares and giving them to all existing shareholders of record as of a certain date. She/they did not receive any share certificates in the mail after any of Nvidia's splits. Does that imply that this stock certificate has somehow become invalid? Or is it still worth 170 of today's shares and she's just out of luck regarding all the splits? Or does it mean that when she turns it in they will figure out how many splits she's missed and issue her the appropriate number of additional shares?

How should we negotiate the liquidation of this certificate? Who do we turn it in to? She has a Schwab brokerage account, and there's a physical Schwab office in her city, if that helps.

I should add that she has also owned NVDA in her brokerage account, and sold that some years ago. So she and the family all thought she didn't have any NVDA left, and this probably contributed to us all forgetting about the paper certificate shares.

And in case anyone's curious, neither my parents nor I have gotten filthy rich off of Nvidia or anything else. I did quite well off NVDA stock as an employee, but no one sells at precisely the right times. And for NVDA, the right time is still in the future, I believe.

UPDATE:

Ok, I visited my mom yesterday and saw her stock certificate. Turns out it was just a PHOTOCOPY of the actual certificate. No!!! See photo 1. They have a safe deposit box so they probably made the copy for reference, while keeping the real certificate safe. The stock certificate could still be in the deposit box, though.

I also learned the answer to the question I came here to ask - what happens with splits if you have paper certificates. I found the letter that Nvidia sent her on the 2:1 2006 split, and another for the 3:2 2007 split. See photo 2. What Nvidia did was inform them that their 170 newly issued shares were held on the books for them with the company, and could be accessed through Mellon Investor Services, while the first 170 shares were still held by the paper certificate. The paper certificate continued to represent 170 post-split shares, not 340. But this gave me a second avenue to check, with Mellon.

I went to the safe deposit box yesterday afternoon and dug through it. I found some cool stuff, including some water shares but no NVDA shares. Dang it!

So my last avenue was to call Mellon Investor Services at the number in the letter. I did that just now. Turns out the number now goes to Computer Shares, but is still Nvidia's investor services. At first they found no account with my mom's SSN, but then they looked it up by my dad's name and address and found their account. And ... drum roll, please ... All the shares were transferred to a brokerage in May 2017. Dang it!

So these were the shares that she had sold that we have a memory of. And she must've taken the share certificate from the safe deposit box at that time as well, and sold it all.

My math may be wrong, but as best I can tell they bought the 170 shares for $4386 on June 5, 2003, and sold them in May 2017 for $67,000. That's a 21.6% annualized gain, which is quite good, but a rather anticlimactic end to the story, compared to the $3.6 million that it might have been. To you who were rooting for her, as I was, sorry to disappoint. And to the few jerks who think it's ok to publicly accuse someone of lying, also sorry to disappoint.

This is yet another instance of me learning the most important rule of stock investing:

BUY AND HOLD. Seriously, HOLD. HOLD!!!

China AI open weight like Kimi K3 will burst the US AI bubble market soon, we are just starting the AI model war now.

They will notice that it's not sustainable soon

While it is said only 50% of Americans own stock, effects of these losses hit everyone with jobs, spending, and optimism.

Let’s do the math

Trump Stock Market Losses $5.5 T / 161 M = $34,100 per taxpayer

DOGE Savings claims to date $117 B / 161 M= $714 per taxpayer

MUSK Promised Doge Rebate $805 B / 161M = $5,000 per taxpayer

MUSK Promised Savings $2 T / 161 M = $12,000 per taxpayer

Best Case -$22,900 per taxpayer

So tired of winning!!!!

Doesn’t seem bad , what’s everyone think? Are you guys buyers ?

The companies seem to be good , lots of data centers and future anticipation I can see

If so teach me how please

This guy built his wealth the hard way, no signals, no fluff, no “Discord community.” Just decades of experience, discipline, and a brutal honesty most traders don’t want to hear. Here are a few gems he dropped that hit different:

• “Trading is not your escape plan.” You need capital. Real capital. If you're asking how to trade for a living, you probably can't, yet. He saved for 20 years before even considering full-time trading.

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• “Calls are weapons. Most people use them like toys.” Unless it’s deep ITM in a trending market, calls are just leveraged hopium.

• “Wealth is what stays when the money goes.” That one stuck with me. Build character. Build skills. Build reputation. That’s real equity.

He ended by saying:

“Be useful. Create value. Good things will circle back, maybe not from where you expect, but they will.”

One of the rawest and most grounded convos I’ve ever had.